WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • JUNE 2017 13 cost of production and competition from imports, while in the ocean it is the multiple conflicts over space. In addition, a growing problem worldwide is environmental contamination, particularly water quality degradation, as there is a growing concern regarding polluted waters worldwide both in lakes and the coastal oceans. Also, the pollution of lands from feedlots and airborne sources of pollution can also be serious constraints to aquaculture, as aquaculture absolutely needs clean air and clean water. Rodrigue Yossa: What does the future of aquaculture look like in your region? Barry Costa-Pierce: In New England, USA, the future of aquaculture in the short term is the expansion of lower trophic level species, particularly shellfish and sea vegetables. This industry will expand because the food markets for these are growing. Finfish aquaculture is not growing as quickly in the USA as it is the case in eastern Canada. Here that has to do with high cost of production, the vast amounts of fish imports from other countries, the lack of ocean space and a regulatory environment that does not allow finfish aquaculture to flourish. Rodrigue Yossa: What does the future of aquaculture look like in the world? Barry Costa-Pierce: In Asia, the future of aquaculture in the foreseeable future will still be based on pond aquaculture because there is still a very large opportunity for expansion. The vast historical aquaculture experience of Asians, the positive economics of aquaculture, and the development of feed and irrigation systems will mean that freshwater pond aquaculture in Asia will remain the largest form of aquaculture in the world for the time being. If you project out to 2050 and beyond, there will be constraints to the expansion of the traditional pond aquaculture in Asia due to urbanization, development, and competition for water. In Africa, I do not see a massive expansion of aquaculture in the short term because very serious water constraints remain and there are large-scale negative economics related to the expansion of water irrigation systems in Africa. However there is a great potential for growth in the future in some areas of Africa, primarily in West Africa and South Africa. In the Americas, aquaculture could expand rapidly in the coastal marine environment because freshwater species are not very popular. Central and South America have very good potential for developing marine aquaculture in exposed sites outside of the coastal zones, but that requires a much greater amount of capital and industrial infrastructure. However it is optimistic to think that marine aquaculture will go further off the coast without strong partnerships with other infrastructures already implemented in the ocean. As wind power and oil and gas development start to grow in the open ocean, there could be a real opportunity for aquaculture production to be integrated with energy production. This has already been done in Germany and it has a huge potential in the Americas. Rodrigue Yossa: What do you think about professional certification of aquaculturists? Barry Costa-Pierce: There has been a movement for professional certification in fish-related disciplines, and two of them I am aware of are certified fisheries scientists from the American Fisheries Society and certified ecologists from the Ecological Society of America. In both cases, these certifications did not mean very much to the people that I know because these certifications do not mean as much with employers like it is in the case of certification in medical and engineering fields. In the past, the WAS initiated discussions on the certification of aquaculture professionals, but then they decided not to go forward. I am open to the idea, but I am a little bit skeptical. Aquaculture companies are employing people because they have some special skills related to their core business. Hence, if a certification was based on skills, in such a way that it led to a “certified hatchery professional” or “certified fish breeder”, these certifications could be more beneficial to industry and maybe more attractive for investors. It would be a good idea to certify different skill levels as employers in the aquaculture industry are looking for a deep skill at a specific level in the aquaculture production cycle. Rodrigue Yossa: What would you have done differently if you had to restart your career in aquaculture? Barry Costa-Pierce: I would have not done anything differently. Although it has been difficult to move family and to constantly change languages, cultures, and bioregions, I think that the opportunity to have experienced the world of aquaculture and meet amazingly diverse people who farm food in water has been a kind of miracle to me and my family. I encourage students to get out of their comfort zones to explore and experience other bioregions, languages, and socioecological aquaculture systems in other countries. I have been very lucky to have had the opportunity to live in other people’s countries and be part of the whole nexus of socio-ecological and economic activities in their environments. Rodrigue Yossa: What advice would you give to young aquaculturists? Barry Costa-Pierce: It is really important that they be both local and global. Wherever you are in the world, when you get involved in aquaculture, you are embedded in a local social-ecological-economic situation. So, if you have a fish pond or oyster farm or whatever aquaculture system, you have to master the husbandry of your system, take care of the rearing environment, make sure that the animals are healthy, and all these skills you acquire make you embedded in your local environment and community. You are required to look beyond your system, and there are your neighbors, banana plantations, fishermen with traps, etc. So you are in a community and you should look at that, and become a student of that too and ask yourself what can you do in an evolutionary sense to help develop the “culture of aquaculture” in that area so that it becomes part of that local community so that the next generation of aquaculturists evolve the blue revolution. Get a deep local experience and then go somewhere else in the world like Iceland, Malawi, Myanmar, etc., where you do not only contribute to local aquaculture production and development, but also learn the language, the culture and the community interactions around aquaculture. Embedding aquaculture wisdom into society goes beyond the biology related to aquaculture, it provides a richness of experiences on the functioning of the whole system that is evolving in that particular area. Go all over the world, eat the local food, drink the local brews, and enjoy not only the fish but also the families!
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