Two expanding and critical parts of the blue economy are the use of marine based renewable energy sources and seafood production from marine aquaculture. Established in July 2019, Australia’s Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre (Blue Economy CRC) is aimed at unlocking the potential of the nation’s ocean resources through sustainable development (www.blueeconmycrc.com.au). Australia and New Zealand have some of the world’s largest Exclusive Economic Zones, they offer extensive access to offshore locations with unrealised potential for aquaculture (Gentry et al., 2017) and renewable energy. The Blue Economy CRC brings together 44 partners from 10 countries to generate opportunity by using established and new practices to move renewable energy and seafood production offshore safely, economically and sustainably. To facilitate this, the Blue Economy CRC contributes to building effective pathways for offshore development by investing in international and regionally relevant R&D. This activity explores potential synergistic benefits that include shared resources, efficient use of ocean space, less competition amongst other user groups of marine space, reduced operational and maintenance costs from possible shared activities. Key impacts are to increase sustainability and build community trust in blue economy industries. The aim here is to provide a brief overview of national offshore prospects and detail some R&D building blocks, current and required, that address barriers to realising the opportunities for offshore co-location and/or integration of both renewable energy and aquaculture production systems. The focus will be on knowledge gained form current Blue Economy CRC R&D building blocks and recent progress in identifying species and systems to underpin multispecies integrated seafood production in offshore locations.
GENTRY, R. R., FROEHLICH, H. E., GRIMM, D., KAREIVA, P., PARKE, M., RUST, M., GAINES, S. D. & HALPERN, B. S. 2017. Mapping the global potential for marine aquaculture. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1, 1317-1324