A Novel and Efficient Way to Assess Net Pen Impacts
Net pen culture has become widespread, and there is growing concern about impacts to benthic communities below the facilities. Potential impacts are hard to assess because the ideal sites for net pen culture are deep, often have currents or cold temperatures, and have patchy substrates that can’t be grab-sampled. Hamoutene et al. (2015) overcame this problem by developing a video monitoring protocol that was able to identify benthic organisms below pens to a high taxonomic level and quantify their abundance. They found that net pen effects were more complex than thought previously, with some impacts occurring away from pens and not directly underneath. Impacts varied substantially and were not uniform, with some sites showing few effects. Surprisingly, fallow pen sites were largely barren, which was difficult to reconcile with obvious cessation of organic enrichment from rearing activities. While some of their findings are yet to be explained fully, the technique seems applicable to impact assessments anywhere that net pens are being used.
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Hamoutene, D., Salvo, F., Bungay, T., Mabrouk, G., Couturier, C., Ratsimandresy, A. and Dufour, S.C., 2015. Assessment of finfish aquaculture effect on Newfoundland epibenthic communities through video monitoring. North American Journal of Aquaculture, 77(2), pp.117-127. dx.doi.org/10.1080/15222055.2014.976681
