This page provides basic information on the combination between aquaculture activities and cables and pipelines, and will be further populated as more information becomes available.
Aquaculture and cables & pipelines are two sectors that rarely interact with each other due to an extremely limited spatial coexistence.
Suitable areas for the development of aquaculture are usually close to shore to ensure maintenance costs are kept to a minimum and infrastructures are sheltered from adverse weather events. Interaction with cables & pipelines is therefore limited temporarily to the installation phase of underwater cables, and geographically at cable landing sites, where cables are connected to the land to ensure grid connection.
This can create challenging interactions as sheltered inshore locations can also represent valuable points of interest for aquaculture.
Additionally, any adverse impacts that both pipelines and cables can generate on surrounding marine ecosystems during their installation, operation and decommissioning phases can impact species cultivated in surrounding the marine environment. For more information on this, please visit the page dedicated to Cables and pipelines & Marine protection and restoration.
- SECTORS' CHARACTERISTICS
Aquaculture
Aquaculture is defined as “the rearing or cultivation of aquatic organisms using techniques designed to increase the production of the organisms in question beyond the natural capacity of the environment” [1]. The EU aquaculture sector is slowly but steadily growing and is ranked the eleventh largest worldwide with a 0.9 % share of the volume of global output in 2021 [2]. At EU level, the activity is framed by the guidelines for sustainable and competitive EU aquaculture. It is a hugely diverse industry [3]: fish farming refers to the growth of fish in controlled aquatic enclosures, farming of shellfish is the cultivation and harvest of molluscs and crustaceans, and algaculture focuses on the farming of algae species. The EU Algae Initiative aims at making a wider use of that resource, that is not sufficiently developed [4].
Physical factors (water temperature and quality, currents, nutrient availability, etc.) have a direct effect on the growth of aquaculture species. Companies are therefore looking for the most suitable locations for their farms, also considering the associated costs of operations such as depth or distance from port that modify transport possibilities as well as construction, and maintenance costs [5]. This makes distant offshore farming more expensive and more exposed to extreme weather hazards. One of the main challenges is therefore the limited availability of inshore sheltered areas.
Cables and pipelines
Across all sea basins, countries are connected by numerous submarine cables such as telecommunication cables that carry digital data, electrical cables that carry energy, and pipelines that transport oil or gas.
Most cables are buried beneath the seabed or are protected externally. However, some cables remain partially or totally unburied and lie on the surface of the sea floor. Pipelines are fixed and laid in protected trenches.
Cables and pipelines are strategic elements for the functioning of the globalized economy as they connect countries and continents and transport key flows. Disruption of their functioning could result in severe financial damage and impact key sectors. For pipelines the effects can be even more serious, as damage to pipelines can also cause serious environmental impacts.
Pipelines are mainly owned by private oil and gas companies, while telecom cables are owned by public limited companies and electricity cables by Transmission System Operators (TSOs). International key players are The European Subsea Cables Association [6] and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) [7].
For more European statistics and data you can also visit the Eurostat website
- References
Existing co-existence and multi-use initiatives
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