In this episode, Dave Little is interviewing Dr. Richard Newton, who discusses his work on the idea of ecologically responsible intensification of fish farming through improvements in farming efficiency and the reuse or repurposing of waste products throughout our supply chains

Intensification in aquaculture generally means producing more from a specific limited or expensive resource - e.g. land area or tank space. However, this approach can too easily have negative consequences when viewed through a broader lens of sustainability. The EU GAIN Project therefore adopted the concept of “eco-intensification”, to indicate that intensification would be more multi-dimensional in terms of parameters considered and solutions developed.

A key approach was to consider not just the aquaculture production activity, but the whole value chain, particularly opportunities for integrating elements into circular economies. This essentially means finding ways of utilising and generating value from waste or by-products either into or out of the aquaculture value chain. This for instance includes better utilisation of fish processing waste e.g. by transforming them into a material that can be used as a feed ingredient for another species, or for fine chemical extraction or input to new biomaterials.

Sorting fish by-products for sale in China

For further information please see:

Stevens et al., 2018. The rise of aquaculture by-products: Increasing food production, value, and sustainability through strategic utilisation. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308597X17305328

Regueiro et. al., 2921. Opportunities and limitations for the introduction of circular economy principles in EU aquaculture based on the regulatory framework. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13188