A conceptual framework for risk management in aquaculture

Aquaculture is considered a high-risk industry in which the heterogeneity of the productions hinders the development and application of risk management. However, risk sources have still received little attention in aquaculture research. The present study aims to provide a framework of the main risk sources perceived by aquaculture producers. Firstly, we conceptualize the different dimensions and typologies of risks. Then, we integrate the main risk sources into a comprehensive framework based on a review of the literature providing empirical evidence on aquaculture producers' risk perceptions in different countries and aquaculture productions. Finally, the opinion of a panel of independent experts provides the vision of other relevant stakeholders in the value chain. This process allowed us to present a picture of risks in the aquaculture industry, consisting of eight risk categories, 19 risk types and 40 risk sources. The most relevant sources of risks for producers in the internal dimension are those related to operations (fingerlings, feeding, seeding and harvesting). In the external dimension, market risks (price variability, inputs price, and changes in demand) and production risks (climatic shocks and diseases) stand out. The perceptions of the stakeholders consulted highlight that producers tend to underestimate important risks, such as regulatory or financial ones. This picture provides a useful risk framework for policy makers, producers, scientists and other stakeholders to address such an essential first step in risk management and governance, the identification of risk sources

Aquaculture production optimisation in multicage farms subject to commercial and operational constraints

The new advances in production methods have led to an increase in aquaculture production to the extent that the industry can now aid traditional fishing in meeting the growing global demand for fish within the context of the depletion of fisheries' resources. In this new context, market competition has increased and the complexity of managing industrial-scale production processes involving biological systems is still a growing problem. This has also led, in many cases, to a lack of management capacity that increases when it comes to setting long-term strategic plans. This study presents a methodology that aims to help aquaculture managers in decision making. It integrates a multi-criteria model and a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) technique in order to provide a production strategy that optimises the value of multiple objectives at a fish farm with multiple cages, batches, feeding alternatives and products. This multi-criteria approach takes into account not only the effect of biological performance on economic profitability, but also the effect on environmental sustainability and aspects of product quality. In addition, it enables consideration of new operational and commercial constraints, such as the maximum volume of fish harvested per week, based on labour and marketing constraints, or the minimum necessary volume of fish harvested on specific dates to comply with commercial agreements. Results obtained demonstrate the utility of this novel approach to decision-making optimisation in aquaculture both when establishing overall strategic planning and when adopting new ways of producing.info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/727315/EU/Mediterranean Aquaculture Integrated Development/MedAID

Public opinions pose barriers for tuna consumption.

Safety and sustainability are key concepts affecting consumers’ decisions on tuna consumption. Although the benefits of consumption exceed the potential negative effects, tuna’s harmful attributes tend to egatively impact purchasing in at-risk groups. For regular individuals, tuna consumption is more influenced by tradition, education or other factors. Overfishing of tuna stocks remains an issue for some consumers. Further development of tuna aquaculture can decrease the presence of methylmercury in farmed tuna and also reduce pressures on wild stocks

Technical efficiency of sea bass and sea bream farming in the Mediterranean Sea by European firms: A stochastic production frontier (SPF) approach

In recent years, European producers of cultured sea bass and sea bream have experienced a highly competitive market with low prices that have caused profitability challenges. An important factor of economic competitiveness for firms is to produce efficiently. In this paper, technical efficiency of European producers of cultured sea bass and sea bream is evaluated for the period 2008-2017 using the stochastic production frontier (SPF) approach. In addition, the effect of a set of specific-firm factors on firms' efficiency is investigated. The majority of firms in the sample were found to have a technical efficiency over 90% with Cypriot and Greek firms being, on average, the most efficient. We also found evidence that the technical efficiency of these firms is positively related to their size. Moreover, the high degree of average efficiency means that further production growth requires innovations that move up the production frontier

Determination of feeding strategies in aquaculture farms using a multiple-criteria approach and genetic algorithms

Since the 1990s, fishing production has stagnated and aquaculture has experienced an exponential growth thanks to the production on an industrial scale. One of the major challenges facing aquaculture companies is the management of breeding activity affected by biological, technical, environmental and economic factors. In recent years, decision-making has also become increasingly complex due to the need for managers to consider aspects other than economic ones, such as product quality or environmental sustainability. In this context, there is an increasing need for expert systems applied to decision-making processes that maximize economic efficiency of the operational process. One of the production planning decisions more affected by these changes is the feeding strategy. The selection of the feed determines the growth of the fish, but also generates the greatest impact of the activity on the environment and determines the quality of the product. In addition, feed is the main production cost in finfish aquaculture. In order to address all these problems, the present work integrates a multiple-criteria methodology with a genetic algorithm that allows determining the best sequence of feeds to be used throughout the fattening period, depending on multiple optimization objectives. Results show its utility to generate and evaluate different alternatives and fulfill the initial hypothesis, demonstrating that the combination of several feeds at precise times may improve the results obtained by one feed strategies.This paper is part of the MedAID project which has received funding from the European Union's H2020 program under grant agreement 727315. The authors also wish to thank the Ibero-American Program for the Development of Science and Technology, CYTED, and the Red Iberoamericana BigDSSAgro (Ref. P515RT0123) for their support of this work

Integration of environmental sustainability and product quality criteria in the decision-making process for feeding strategies in seabream aquaculture companies

Economic criteria have traditionally been taken into account as the most important factor for the selection of the most suitable feed in aquaculture. However, currently, management decisions have become increasingly complex, taking into account issues such as environmental sustainability and product quality. In this regard, there is growing recognition that the quality of the environment in which an organization operates has a direct effect on its financial results. Unfortunately, the complex integration of all these factors, which are sometimes opposing, limits the ability of aquaculture producers to adapt their production strategy to cleaner production systems. In this context, the aim of this work is to address this problem with the development of a novel, multiple-criteria decision-making optimization methodology that allows producers to include different preferences in the design of feeding strategies. Here, this methodology is applied to gilthead seabream production. The results obtained show the utility of this methodology for integrating numerous criteria in the evaluation of various alternatives and for carrying out an efficient sensitivity analysis which test the impact of different hypotheses on stakeholders' preferences.This research was undertaken under the MedAID project, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no 727315 (http://www.medaid-h2020.eu/). The authors wish to thank the Ibero-American Program for the Development of Science and Technology (CYTED) and the Red Iberoamericana BigDSSAgro (Ref. P515RT0123) for their support of this work, and Juan B. Cabral for the package scikit-criteria for MCDM

Capital structure and firm performance: Agencytheory application to Mediterranean aquaculturefirms

The study uses firm level panel data to determine perform-ance-leverage relationships among Mediterranean aquaculture production firms in Croatia, Italy, Spain, France and Greece. Astochastic frontier production function is used to determine and define performance through firm level efficiency estimates. The multilevel internal instrument variable approach is employed to identify the causal relation ships between performance and leverage. Our results show that technical efficiency has been increasing across all firms over the period 2008-2016. The agency-cost hypothesis holds such that leverage has an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance.This implies that leverage increases with efficiency, but efficiency begins to decrease at sufficiently higher levels of leverage. The reverse relationship confirms the franchise-value hypothesis, which states that firms with high efficiency will try to protect the value of their high income by holding more equity capital. Implications for the results are drawn for the Mediterranean region.The authors would like to thank the MedAID (Mediterranean Aquaculture Integrated Development) project, under which this research was conducted.The MedAID project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement [no. 727315] (http://www.medaid-h2020.eu/)

Study: pangasius effect frozen fish fillet imports in European Union.

The entry of Pangasius into the E.U. market changed the equilibrium for imported frozen fish fillets. Pangasius is displacing traditional species like cod and hake. In a study, the largest levels of cointegration among species and exporting countries were found in a group including the five top non-European exporters of fish fillets to the E.U. Exports from the U.S. and Russia showed the highest level of significance in the interaction of their prices with those from Vietnam

Seafood demand and aquaculture growth. Relationships vary in developed, emerging markets.

An analysis of the relationships between aquaculture development and its consequences on seafood consumption found both similarities and differences across countries and species. Developing and emerging producing countries coincided across seafood consumption and the share of local aquaculture in total supply. The relationship between consumption and local supply was weak in developed importing countries. Developed markets were important as drivers for aquaculture expansion in developing countries. Consumption in northern countries somewhat drove development of the production of certain species in the southern world

Tuning of modulation spectrum parameters for voice pathology detection

Acoustic parameters are frequently used to assess the presence of pathologies in human voice. Many of them have demonstrated to be useful but in some cases its results could be optimized by selecting appropriate working margins. In this study two indices, CIL and RALA, obtained from Modulation Spectra are described and tuned using different frame lengths and frequency ranges to maximize AUC in normal to pathological voice detection. After the tuning process, AUC reaches 0.96 and 0.95 values for CIL and RALA respectively representing an improvement of 16 % and 12 % at each case respect to the typical tuning based only on frame length selection