The Ropes to Reefs project will assess the ecosystem services and benefits of offshore mussel farming and assess the restoration of essential fish habitat, biodiversity and associated healthy fish stocks.
University of Plymouth
The Ropes to Reefs project, funded by the Fisheries Industry Science Partnership under the UK Seafood Fund, aims to evaluate the ecological benefits of the UK's first significant offshore mussel farm located in Lyme Bay, owned by aquaculture company Offshore Shellfish.
This initiative, led by the University of Plymouth in collaboration with industry partners and conservation groups, is tagging lobsters near the mussel farm to understand their movements and habitat preferences.
This effort will later extend to other marine species like thornback ray, black bream, and thick-lipped mullet, to gauge the mussel farm's effects on vital regional fishery species, the project partners said in a press release.
The project intends to address scientific gaps regarding local marine life, inform future management strategies, and investigate how such aquaculture ventures can support sustainable food production in alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals.
To do this, the research team are deploying an array of advanced, non-invasive techniques for monitoring marine environments, including echo sounders, multibeam sonar, and ground truthing cameras for detailed ocean floor data.
Additionally, the project will bring in technology from the FISH INTEL project, a UK-France-Belgium collaboration, to track marine life through the world's first multi-farm aquaculture telemetry network.
Lobsters near the mussel farm will be tagged and monitored to understand their movements and habitat preferences.
“The biggest environmental gain from offshore mussel farming is that it produces large quantities of high-quality protein with a lower environmental footprint than virtually any other food production method," said John Holmyard, Managing Director at Offshore Shellfish Ltd.
“So what we are getting is food provision with zero land use, zero fresh water use, zero pollution, zero fertiliser, zero chemicals, zero medication, zero feed input, zero or very low net carbon emissions. On the flip side to that, it delivers positive ecosystem services, increased biodiversity, habitat creation and the spillover benefit to surrounding fisheries. When you add up all of that, it makes a very powerful case for this type of food production,” he added.
Anecdotal evidence points to aquaculture farms enhancing local fish populations and biodiversity, but the Ropes to Reefs project hopes to scientifically validate these observations.
The goal is to understand and demonstrate how low-trophic aquaculture, such as mussel and scallop farming, is vital for modern sustainable food production and marine ecosystem health, the project partners say.
“Anecdotally, we often say that scallop farms are a breeding ground for fish. They have creatures growing on all the equipment we have in the water, some living and growing on or around it and others feeding on the life it houses," said Greg Clifford, Director of Scallop Ranch Ltd, and one of the Ropes to Reefs project partners.
“Ropes to Reefs will add the science and rigour to this, quantifying and rationalising what we see as we go about our daily work. When we truly understand how the farm interacts and supports the surrounding ecosystem, we can build a case for why low-trophic aquaculture is such an important part of the modern world,” Clifford added.