The release of nutrients and organic matter from aquaculture systems in Nordic countries

The extent of the environmental impact of an aquaculture development is mainly dependent on husbandry, feeding technique, feed composition and site selection. Feed composition, digestibility and feed conversion coefficient are of paramount importance for the level of discharge of wastes derived from fish farming. These determine the release of nutrients (e.g. phosphorus and nitrogen) and organic material. Excretion products (in particular waste feed and faeces) may cause changes in the ecosystem. However, the overall environmental load derived from aquaculture is comparatively small when compared to other waste loads from communities, industries, agriculture and forestry. The amount of phosphorus and nitrogen in feeds has decreased to 1 % and 7%, respectively, while feed conversion efficiency due to high energy feeds has improved to values around 1.2 in most salmon farming operations. This has greatly reduced overall environmental loads, which are presently calculated with 10 kg phosphorus and 60 kg nitrogen per tonne of fish produced. The organic wastes per tonne produced are presently estimated to reach 2500 kg wet weight per tonne live weight fish. System design and site selection are additional important considerations which influence greatly the level of environmental impact. The advantage of land-based systems over water-based systems is the fact that water treatment of effluents is possible in such systems, thereby greatly reduction total loads to receiving waters. The paper mainly focusses on nutritional aspects of environmental load.