The importance of aquaculture at Delphi Economics Forum

Every year in the ancient city of Delphi, Delphi Economic Forum gathers top leaders from across sectors in an effort to spark dialogue, inspire change, and transform conversation into action. EDIH Oceanopolis will be present at this important conference to present and talk about to main topics: Fisheries and aquaculture. 

Today, fisheries and aquaculture are the main sources of food from the ocean.

Fisheries: In recent years, fisheries have stagnated due to fish stock limitations, overfishing ... With the warming of the ocean comes geographical changes in water chemistry, microbiome, currents, altered migration of species and temporal miss matches within the food web and rising tides will impact fish stocks by altering estuarian nurseries and coastal freshwater systems. In order to secure sustainable fisheries in a changing world, increased transparency and cross-sectorial data sharing will be essential to monitor the trends and changes in fish populations and be able to adapt policy and management accordingly. At the EDIH Oceanopolis, we are working with suppliers and fisheries companies to implement more comprehensive digital documentation of the catches (species and sizes). Further, digital technologies are merging to implement smart catching to minimize bycatches. This data, when linked to Geopositioning and climate data, will improve the accuracy of our models, awareness and management.

Aquaculture: While fisheries remain an important component to global food supply from the ocean, aquaculture continues to grow and surpass fisheries. In some parts of the sector, there is an emerging reduction in the growth due to its environmental impacts and fish mortalities due to parasites and diseases with increasing occurrences of other threats such as Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB), string jellyfish, and emerging new diseases associated with climate change. For aquaculture production to grow with the changing ocean and to protect the environment, the sector is developing a number of new productions systems and strategies that reduce environmental impacts and are more resilient to climate change and increase circularity in the production. EDIH Oceanopolis and NORCE work to increase the uptake of digitalization in aquaculture from making the systems more efficient, improving fish welfare and optimizing energy use. The emerging technologies will contribute to coastal environmental monitoring and improving regional biodiversity.