Protecting Ecosystems

Using Scientific Research to Protect the Environment

Stakeholders in Canada and around the world are demanding that farmed fish and shellfish be produced in a way that does not harm the environment.

As is the case with all natural resource-based and food-production sectors, environmental change is expected. These changes may be supportive, neutral, or detrimental to ecosystem health and productivity. Sustainability depends on understanding, mitigating, and managing these changes.

This means using all the scientific research available to us to find ways of minimizing and mitigating aquaculture’s impacts in order to ensure ecosystem sustainability. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, other federal and provincial government agencies, the academic community, and the industry itself have conducted many studies that have enabled us to better understand ecosystem interactions. This, in turn, has provided us with an ever-increasing knowledge base that helps us with everything from identifying the best site locations to developing better farm technologies.

Sustainability – whether of the ecosystem, wild fish stocks or aquaculture – is impossible to achieve without a solid, fact-based scientific foundation. We know much more now than we did 20 years ago when Canada’s aquaculture industry was in its infancy, but there’s always more to learn.

Learn more about the advances being made in these key areas:

• Shellfish and Sustainability
• Protecting Habitat
• Introductions and Transfers