Mario F. Teisl

Aquaculture has been responsible for an impressive growth in the global supply of seafood. As of 2016, more than half of all global seafood production comes from aquaculture. To meet future global seafood demands, there is need and opportunity to expand marine aquaculture production in ways that are both socially and ecologically sustainable. This requires integrating biophysical, social, and engineering sciences. Such interdisciplinary research is difficult due to the complexity and multi-scale aspects of marine aquaculture and inherent challenges researchers face working across disciplines. To this end, we developed a framework based on Elinor Ostrom’s social–ecological system framework (SESF) to guide interdisciplinary research on marine aquaculture. We first present the framework and the social–ecological system variables relevant to research on marine aquaculture and then illustrate one application of this framework to interdisciplinary research underway in Maine, the largest producer of marine aquaculture products in the United States. We use the framework to compare oyster aquaculture in two study regions, with a focus on factors influencing the social and biophysical carrying capacity. We conclude that the flexibility provided by the SESF is well suited to inform interdisciplinary research on marine aquaculture, especially comparative, cross-case analysis.

Viewed through the perspective of the nexus of food, energy, and water systems, improved management of coastal resources requires enhanced understanding of cross-system and cross-scale interactions and dynamics. The economics of changing coastal resources hinges on increased understanding of complex tradeoffs associated with these complex multisystem and multiscale relationships. How diverse forms of change will affect water quantity and quality as well as food and energy production in coastal areas is not well understood. Coastal resources provide many goods and services and influence markedly the nature of many human communities. In 2010, 43 percent of the US population lived in marine coastal counties (US Census 2012), and from 1960 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by 87 percent, faster than the rest of the United States (62 percent). In addition to serving as attractive settlement locations, coastal areas provide critical ecosystem services, including critical habitat for commercially important species in some cases (Gutman 2007, Kroll et al. 2012, Hales et al. 2014). Abundant natural resource amenities also provide valuable recreation and tourism experiences (Hales et al. 2014). Further, new economic opportunities also exist in coastal areas, with many recent examples of emerging products (Barros et al. 2009), innovative seafood technologies (Ayer and Tyedmers 2009, Bugallo et al.