Making Space for Aquaculture

The AquaSpace project has the goal of providing increased space for aquaculture, to encourage and allow increased aquaculture production in marine and freshwater systems.

The consortium will achieve this by identifying the key constraints in aquaculture development in a wide range of contexts and for different aquaculture types. Constraints will be mapped against a wide variety of tools and methods that have already been developed in national and EU projects for spatial planning purposes, including some that have been designed specifically for aquaculture. In the freshwater sector only, the project will also consider ecosystem services provided by aquaculture that are relevant to integrated catchment planning and management. At sixteen case study sites with a variety of scales, aquaculture at different trophic levels with different environmental interactions, and variable space-related development constraints as defined by local stakeholders, the project will assess appropriate tools using a common process so as to facilitate comparison and synthesis. The project will develop these outcomes and define a set of evaluated tools that can be used to facilitate the aquaculture planning process, and overcoming present constraints.

The goal is to provide a lasting legacy for the increased allocation and use of marine and freshwater space for aquaculture development, which will lead to the increased supply of aquatic products in Europe.

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