Intensive marine aquaculture systems in floating cages use natural resources (i.e. space, materials and auxiliary facilities, water to support fish, and feed and broodstock) and ecosystem services (i.e., oxygen replenishment and dispersal and assimilation of wastes) and transform materials through the use of energy to final product and wastes. In Thesprotia, 26 floating cage farms have been established, of which 21 farms in the Sagiada strip which borders to Albania. Moreover, the forthcoming establishment of the “Area of Organized Aquaculture Development (ΑOAD)” in Sagiada, is expected to allow local producers achieve economies of scale, facilitate compliance with veterinary and environmental legislation. Marine aquaculture in floating cages is a rather recent activity in Albania.
Currently, there are 23 marine cage farms, all of them situated in the Ionian Sea, producing sea bream and sea bass. A critical issue arising from the current situation in both sectors is that the overall ecological sustainability of the farming systems used has not been studied in both countries.
An appropriate widely applied method to assess their environmental footprint is the “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)” method. LCA is used to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product (in this case sea bass), process, or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment; to assess the impact of those energy and materials used and releases to the environment; and to identify and evaluate opportunities to achieve environmental improvements.
The use of LCA in sea bass production intends to:
Improvement guidelines will be proposed via a final blue paper for both cross-border areas/farms, on the following issues:
Farmers, policy makers, scientists and SMEs will benefitted from these outcomes through cross-border co-operation, dissemination of resutls, information on environmentally-friendly practices and carbon reduction in aquaculture. Moreover this project has originality by its own merit as LCA is an emmerging tool in agro-industry for assessing ecological footprint and therefore may become in near future a model work not only for several farmed aquatic species, but also for other production sectors even beyond agro-industries.
