Permaculture

• These farms are springing up along coasts and in offshore waters worldwide.
• Australians will be familiar with Tasmania’s salmon industry, New South Wales’ oyster farms, and seaweed farms along the southern coastline.
• This approach has proven itself on land as a way to blend farming with healthy ecosystems.
• Read more:
  Farming fish in fresh water is more affordable and sustainable than in the ocean

Making aquaculture better

• Many of today’s most pressing problems – from climate change to biodiversity loss to pollution – are linked to the way we produce food on land.
• To make new farmland often involves removing habitat, destroying trees and adding synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.
• We cannot afford to use the same intensive methods of farming in the oceans as we have been on land.

What is marine permaculture?

• The goal was simple: create ways of farming which give back to the soil and ecosystems, using tools like no-till farming, companion planting and food forests.
• Over the last 50 years, it has been adopted by farmers around the world.
• Here, species with different ecological roles are grown together, producing more food from your farm – and strengthening natural ecosystem services.
• Australian work here includes efforts to restore rocky reefs by creating structures with the nooks and crannies small sea creatures need.

From the grassroots

• In part, that’s because supertrawlers, motherships, and large blue-water fish farms are expensive.
• Small-scale sea farms are less likely to do damage, and should also boost resilience by investing in local social and environmental benefits.

How do we make this a reality?

• Governments have an essential role in creating comprehensive spatial plans to guide aquaculture in an area or region.
• Researchers can help by developing measures of success and testing new techniques to help guide the new communities which will form to farm the sea.
• Over the past half-century, permaculture on land has grown into a diverse movement challenging conventional wisdom about how to produce food.

Scott Spillias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.