Aquaculture technology is on the move, enabling production in more open and exposed ocean environments around the world. These new systems offer solutions to environmental challenges facing conventional aquaculture, yet new technologies also create new social challenges and potentially exacerbate, or at minimum recreate , others. Offshore aquaculture research and governance are still in early stages, as is our understanding of the social repercussions and challenges associated with development.
This paper provides an evaluation and reflection on offshore aquaculture from a social science perspective and is based on findings from a modified World Café group discussion method including the thoughts and experiences of social science experts.
Key challenges and uncertainties including a lack of an appropriate regulatory framework, societal perceptions of offshore aquaculture, and offshore aquaculture’s contribution to society were identified. Among the identified challenges are conflicts of space and concern of social equity outcomes. These identified challenges and uncertainties coincide with long-standing challenges of conventional aquaculture. The governance implications of these challenges are discussed as well as the need for social sciences to address these challenges through transformative and transdisciplinary approaches that bridge science and society.
In conclusion, we observe that the technological changes in offshore aquaculture challenge conventional governance and require transformed and disrupted solutions that intersect not only science and society, but also different scientific bodies and disciplines. The development of offshore aquaculture is both a challenge and opportunity for the application of this transformed mode of research and understanding. In this regard, transdisciplinary research approaches are warranted. This implies a different orientation of science and its role in governance in the 21st century. The character of this new (transformative) orientation of science is only now beginning to emerge, but will need to accommodate new opportunities for science and research, in tandem with society. Only then can we forge a collective meaning on how to manage the complex challenges for offshore aquaculture.