FLF Extension: Addressing the ability of marine aquaculture to respond to climate change using systems thinking and precision-based frameworks

Ensuring a sustainable supply of healthy and nutritious food is one of the most critical challenges facing the world. With increasing pressures on terrestrial space, marine fish aquaculture has been identified as an essential route to increase food production. However, climate change poses a severe threat as fish production is highly sensitive to the environment. Traditional aquaculture climate change assessments focus on global or regional scale analysis using long-term decadal averages, and do not capture the environmental variability and the multiple stressors that influence fish production. As a result, impact assessments lack the necessary detail for action, and progress on climate change adaptation has been slow, leaving the marine aquaculture sector vulnerable to climate stressors such as increasing sea temperatures. Industry and policymakers are now demanding urgent access to reliable information, evidence-based approaches, and robust tools that will allow them to better understand how farm environments are changing, the implications for future fish production, and the potential options for adaptation.

The overall vision of my Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) is to deliver a rigorous scientific framework for assessing the impact of climate change on marine aquaculture that allows the industry to respond and adapt in a responsible manner. The research integrates detailed analysis of what is happening in the complex farm system now, with future farm-level projections of climate change and potential stakeholder response. Atlantic salmon, the world’s most produced marine finfish species, and the UK’s top food export is the primary focus. The underlying principles and information are also highly relevant and applicable to other farmed species and aquaculture production systems. The intention is to disrupt current approaches that are stifling progress on climate adaptation, by providing the industry-relevant knowledge and tools for robust, farm-level assessments, allowing the sector to accelerate climate action.

This interdisciplinary research combines aspects of climate, environmental, biological and social sciences, and exemplifies how complex problems need innovative and comprehensive solutions. The Renewal phase will build on this work through increased translation of the scientific approaches into actionable information, empowering industry and policymakers to develop robust site-specific climate risk assessments and adaptation plans. This includes developing evidence-based classification schemes for strategic and operational climate risk reporting, creating robust indicators for monitoring and evaluating climate adaptation progress, and developing a climate change resilience platform that will be a central resource and focal point to help industry and policymakers develop farm-specific impact assessments and adaptation plans. All this research is conducted in close collaboration with industry stakeholders, regulators, policymakers, and research organisations to enhance knowledge transfer and optimise outcomes for end-users.

This FLF will deliver the route to significantly advance climate action in marine aquaculture through a comprehensive package of information, data, methodologies and tools, structured in a convenient and user-friendly format for end-users. The FLF outputs will enable the industry, policymakers and other associated stakeholders to respond effectively and responsibly to the climate emergency, whilst enhancing blue economy opportunities and optimising the role of marine fish production in global food and nutrition security.