The aquaculture industry evolved from rather environmentally harmful past practices to the current high-tech management focused on increasing production concomitantly with sustainability while surpassing wild fisheries as a world contributor to seafood supply. Small-scale aquaculture (SSA), as the name implies, is still far behind other forms of aquaculture in global documentation and proper support. According to the FAO, jointly small-scale fisheries and aquaculture produce more than 50% of the global seafood, and aquaculture continues to grow as a source of seafood, but in both sectors, the recognition of contribution from these activities is often unacknowledged and unquantified. Arguably, one of the most sustainable farmed species group that also attract the investment of small farmers as a family-operated business is suspension-feeding bivalves. Bivalves are in the spotlight for scalability, but criticism about the species perception as a luxury item pushes for an analysis of bivalves as a possible contributor to seafood security.
Focusing on the food security aspect possibly provided by the small-scale shellfish farming industry, w e provide an overview of shellfish aquaculture in the international, and in more detail, national context, based on a recognized framework and plan of action from FAO’s International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture and key indicators (KI) for the analysis of the status of small-scale shellfish aquaculture (SSSA; Fig.1). Our analysis show that basic data and supporting structure for SSSA are often missing from databases and gets overlooked in national contexts. As a result, SSSA reports and long-standing sustainability are uncertain and these highlight the need for acknowledgement and assistance in practice. ¨
Figure 1: Study overview based upon FAO’s IYAFA pillars (Figure made with icons by Freepik ; Parzival’1997; noomtah ; and imaginationlol from www.flaticon.com).