Yesterday stakeholders meet to discuss Marine Spatial Planning and aquaculture in the Baltic Sea, a round table event hosted by PartiSEApate. During the discussions it became clear that member states have different views on what would be sustainable aquaculture within the Baltic Sea.
PartiSEApate is an EU project that focuses on multilevel governance and on establishing a pan-Baltic dialogue between planners and the whole range of diverse stakeholders that need to cooperate in maritime spatial planning. As of the launch of the Framework Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning and Integrated Coastal Management in March 2013, all countries around the Baltic Sea Region should have started the processes to establish Maritime Spatial Planning within their own countries.
Member states are currently developing national aquaculture strategies as a result of a demand from the European Commission to stimulate increases in aquaculture. It is crucial that any new potential aquaculture activities are in line with both the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) as to not undermine reaching good environmental status (GES) by 2020.
As mentioned above marine spatial plans are under way and during the meeting it was reveled that many county’s along the Swedish Baltic coast have or are under development of identifying potential locations suitable for aquaculture and the establishment of mussel farms in particular. Open cage fish farms where seen by the majority of participants as an unsustainable and unwanted aquaculture type within an already eutrophicated Baltic Sea. Mussel farms on the other hand where seen as a positive type of aquaculture helping to extract nutrients, although scale was seen as an important factor and mussel farms of large scale where seen as negative for the environment.
Moreover, Member states appears to use different approaches to calculate the impact aquaculture has on the marine environment. Denmark seems to use a model where mussel farms and fish farms neutralize each other, e.g. for every three kilo of mussels a farmer produce he is allowed to farm one kilo of fish. Sweden on the other hand seems to strive towards reaching a “negative” environmental impact, here mussel farms are seen as a potential tool to reduce nutrients, and depending on scale a desirable aquaculture type that could help reduce eutrophication levels.
A number of pilot studies where presented, of which most showed that mussel farms not to be economically sustainable, emphasising the need for subsidies. It was brought to attention that Denmark plan to increase their aquaculture farms by 50% by 2020. Further more, it was mentioned that it had been discussed whether or not to include mussel farms as a measure under Programmes of Measures (PoM) within the MSFD.
For more information about the network and NGO priorities for environmental responsible aquaculture within the Baltic Sea and the EU please see links below.