Aqua-farming shellfish is the closest thing to free protein we're going to get.
My folks are involved with farming mussels in New Zealand. The farms are in a river mouth, putting the nitrogen and phosphate runoff from farms to good use. The phytoplankton they eat is replenished 500m down-current from the mussels.
There's one major risk - the 'spat' - the baby mussels used to start a vertical mussel line - are harvested when they're washed up on a beach. Sometimes, there's no spat and no one knows why. The concern is that climate change will result in less, or no spat, and then no more mussel aquaculture.
My biggest concern is that along with the nitrogen and phosphate runoff come pesticides and other less savory compounds that then bio-accumulate in the farmed shellfish.
It depends on whether or not they bioaccumulate^W -- checking wikipedia apparently the word I want is biomagnification.
The basic idea is that as you move up the food chain the concentration of toxins gets higher. So a plant might have a relatively low level of toxin absorbed even if it was directly applied, but a shellfish that consumed algae that were exposed to the toxin downstream from the farm might have a considerably higher level.
I don't know a whole lot about the details in this specific case, but that's my concern.
I visited a farm in British Columbia about ten years ago that was raising bivalves (geoducks I think) and they'd worked out how to raise them all the way from fertilization through all the microscopic stages. In retrospect, they probably had to do that because clams aren't polite enough to attach to something, en masse, that you can collect on the beach.
Is because baby clams have a lot of predators, specially crabs and starfishes, so they mums either nurse it under the shell, or try to spread it for the widest area possible.
Honest question: How does that scale up? At first guess, I'd imagine there's insufficient area in (non-polluted) river mouths to create a large enough sustainable supply for world-wide demand.
Why does it need to scale up? I think scaling up is what caused problems with our planet, we need to start thinking locally.
For Connecticut, this is a local issue (too much Nitrogen in the sound) and this is a local solution that not only _reverses_ a problem, but produces real food and economy.
This economy doesn't have to be at scale, other places on this earth have different problems and require different solutions.
We need to work with nature, not against it. Let nature do the work. A healthy natural system is the true meaning of wealth in this world, it works without ANY human or oil expense. A fly-wheel system that generates money without effort.
Reference: http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2719&q=325572&deepNav_... | "Each summer, the bottom waters in the western half of Long Island Sound experience hypoxia, or very low levels of dissolved oxygen. Extensive monitoring and modeling of Long Island Sound have identified the excessive discharge of nitrogen from human activities as the primary pollutant causing hypoxia. "
>> Aqua-farming shellfish is the closest thing to free protein we're going to get.
I think biomanufacturing of protein via bacteria/algae could be the cheapest. For example there's even a company, prottero, making sugar via bacteria at 1/3 of the cost of sugar cane.
And theoretically with those of methods , you might be able to feed the world from an area the size of new jersey.
We need open source resources on how to build and maintain farms like this. Unfortunately these guys are not sharing yet, at least I couldn't find any detailed information. I'd love to try this myself, but as a complete novice i'd need a lot basic information - like what species to grow, how to get seeds and plant them, etc.
I couldn't agree much. If you look outside of CS and mathematics, where FLOSS principles are widely represented, in most domains it is very hard to access the knowledge. Besides the experts protecting their expertise, there are some fields where they actively try to discourage any such dissemination of knowledge to protect the interest of the trade -medicine, where there is also a question of accountability- or to protect society as a whole -the knowledge to make weapons and explosives. Obviously, these are important arguments you have to deal with when trying to convince somebody that open knowledge is a benefit to society.
There's also quite a deal of effort that goes into making these resources available, so it's not just a problem of opening things.
Have a look at 'open source ecology', there are things existing, but this is still a long way from getting to the point where CS/math is.
You can also look at Earthships, a fairly utopian idea, and how far they are from embracing openness, despite their proclaimed philosophy.
Medicine (and many other "closed" subjects) is widely taught in schools - it is not a secret guild.
You can also go to school for agriculture, to learn about the growth of crops and about livestock management. The difference is that this ocean farming is a new endeavor by a small group. It's not like CS or math where independent researchers can download a compiler or pick up a notebook and verify or extend other studies, you need years of work and large amounts of money.
Would there be pull requests for this if they opened it to the public?
>Medicine (and many other "closed" subjects) is widely taught in schools - it is not a secret guild.
We agree, but you could as well say thus that closed software is not really closed since you can learn software in schools. It's different from having easily accessible knowledge, when it's hard to get actual data on many subjects (in some cases, this data is even actually protected by law).
>It's not like CS or math where independent researchers can download a compiler or pick up a notebook and verify or extend other studies, you need years of work and large amounts of money.
It's not so much of a problem. There are enough people out there that are ready to test the ideas and techniques. If you could find say a set of various setups that worked for a set of given conditions (with a good description of costs, encountered issues and output) then you could have people who can test it by themselves while changing the parts they don't like, and contribute their own data. There's a huge amount of money spent on experimenting already, however it's basically all done in a closed manner.
BTW, if you have "the secret guild" feeling out of my comment, it's because discussing with my physician friends, they clearly advocated for some principles in this spirit (irrevocability of the physician's opinion, unilateral defense of their interests regardless of any moral issue, etc). It may vary depending on your country, of course.
Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. Sure, medicine and law are widely taught. Those same two groups work to ensure that it's very difficult to acquire and apply that knowledge. Getting into med school is difficult and expensive, with a license to practice even more so.
I'm not indicating whether I agree or disagree, but: the stakes are high with both. Bad lawyer can doom a client for the rest of his life. Bad doctor can take life. I expect compsci to become more difficult as our stakes continue to increase, and we are already getting there with Ashley Madison/USG level PII disclosures and mass surveillance engineering, for example. Some life or death fields within our own are already there or on their way.
Think about all the bad programmers you are aware of, and think about how many are employed. I believe medicine is trying to avoid that, somewhat understandably, with collateral damage against people who would otherwise be good doctors but are unlucky. Calling it a conspiracy might be a bit of a reach. Take that sentiment into watching Patch Adams, for example, and the big bad mean medical establishment might make a smidgen more sense. On grounds of dignity and tradition is one thing, but competency is another and I think the root of the conflict.
This is all interesting of course when you also, correctly, notice that there are many bad doctors and lawyers all the same. My ex-wife's divorce attorney needed help from my own understanding notary procedure (yes, really). But hard to say whether there are fewer with the system in place. Maybe there are.
Again, no opinion being shared on whether I agree with the practice or not (I'm honestly unsure, if you want the truth), just an observation. Maybe some of the issues in our industry, particularly incredibly lax security practices, might be mitigated with a bar to entry similar to medicine. I simply don't have that answer and I can see arguments on both sides.
>> Think about all the bad programmers you are aware of, and think about how many are employed. I believe medicine is trying to avoid that, somewhat understandably, with collateral damage against people who would otherwise be good doctors but are unlucky.
It's not accurate.
We definitely know from the UK, Australia and Africa, that properly trained nurses can do well, many of the doctor's jobs, while increasing accessibility.
Liability. If there were actuaries able to accurately assess the risk of your engineering practice you'd have a much different approach to software development in many niches than, "see what sticks and iterate."
My colleague is working towards becoming a licensed engineer in software. I'm learning a lot about formal methods from him in order to build more reliable software, faster.
If we really were software engineers then there would be a state of the art and if you employed any practices short of that you'd be liable for damages your software causes. And you'd probably go out of business pretty fast.
Upvoted! (And I don't know, why you were downvoted) If we're doing software the open source way (and thus securing the sustainability of the software "eco" system), why not do the same for food production (and secure the sustainability of food production). Just this morning I talked to a woman on the Sunday market and she told me about a guy who, even thou he has his own green houses and makes a living doing that, gives all that info to who ever is interested (best produce to grow, best timing for the market etc.) Concentration of this knowledge (or even patents) in the hands of a few is bad, bad, bad.
If you or anyone else is seriously interested, leave your email and I'll shoot you a note.
My buddy has started commercially farming oysters and other seafood the last few years. The info is not widely available, but you can find it if you look. Many existing farmers (at least half) are fully willing to share knowledge with each other, give you a tour, etc. The fact is they are more in competition with traditional oystermen than they are with other farmers from another region. Another great source of information is the aquaculture folks in your state's DNR (or similar department). Set up a meeting with them and ask away.
Yes, I also got excited when I read that, but "open sourcing" means providing freely accessible information, not consulting. And they dont have any accessible information that I could see. Also I dont have 30 grand or a boat, I wanted to try this on a much smaller scale, just for my own interest and benefit.
> Imagine being a chef in 2015 and discovering that there are thousands of vegetable species you’ve never cooked with. It’s like discovering corn, arugula, tomatoes, and lettuce for the first time.
This struck me as particularly interesting. Corn, arugula, tomatoes and lettuce are all a product of selective breeding. To what extent has this been applied to "sea vegetables" and what might the possibilities look like?
> New farms are being built in polluted areas like Bridgeport and the Bronx River in order to soak up the nitrogen and carbon, pull out heavy metals, and re-build reefs.
They're pulling out the heavy metals. Where do those heavy metals go? Into the food? I limit my intake of certain foods because of their heavy metal contents; do I have to do the same for their seaweeds?
> It’s a good point. We have two types of farms: those that we place in pristine waters that are tested weekly and those that grow in polluted water. These “pollution farms” like in the Bronx river, farm ecosystem services, with none of the crops going into the food system. Key is traceability of our crops.
I wonder if it'd require extra processing to make sure heavy metals aren't left in the ethanol or if the typical production methods already leave that stuff out.
Distillation should have no problem dealing with heavy metals. Other nasty things though are azeotropic with either water or ethanol and would have to be accounted for if you wanted to make drinkable vodka. Contaminants are less of a concern if you are looking to make fuel rather than booze.
I recall seeing some early biofuel powered busses that smelled like frenchfries because they used recycled deep fryer oil. I don't know how popular they'd be if they smelled like Bronx clam.
I'd imagine there would be some impact on the native ecosystem. You can't prevent the seed from escaping the aquafarm and (potentially invasive) oysters and kelps growing where they normally would not, displacing local species.
That said.. the small footprint of these farms means you could probably localize this impact, or pick areas that are at a lower risk for farming.
Potentially the biggest hurdle here would be regulatory issues to prevent the above issues from happening without stifling the industry.
If there are many thousands of edible sea plants, maybe plants and shellfish local to the region could be used.
Seems like you could potentially find places where the farms would do more good than harm, even ignoring the food production aspect: They claimed that the farms make good habitats for various types of marine life, serve as effective storm breaks, etc. I wonder if they might even be able to improve local ocean chemistry in some cases (absorbing fertilizer runoff, stabilizing pH, etc.).
It will take significant practical experience and study to tease out all the effects and figure out the most sustainable techniques. At any rate, it’s likely better than most of the existing fish farms in the ocean. How are those currently regulated?
The author begins to address one of your questions in the article, although I would like to see this subject treated in a little bit more depth.
"Even the best land-based farms pollute, sending nitrogen into our waterways, so we use our kelp to capture that nitrogen, turn it into liquid fertilizers, and send it back to organic farmers to grow their wonderful vegetables. When the nitrogen then runs back into Long Island Sound, we capture it again."
It seems like, at least in theory, these types of farms can also help limit the damage caused by land-based human activity to coastal ecosystems.
Oysters and kelp are already everywhere. The sea has currents that transport everything that is in the sea everywhere. Stuff grows when it reaches a suitable climate.
I am wrong! It's a beaver [0], for the beaver trade that built the port. Still, the Lenape word for "Queens" is "island of sea shells", and they're a huge part of New York food history [1]!
I felt the "we will employ anyone" message was one that was also very important here. If we can train people to be sea farmers and give them a mission that is both good for the world and good for their own self esteem, I think that would be at least as valuable as the food grown, if not more so.
It's a great idea, the issue is scalability. To have an aquatic farm that touches the bottom, you could only use the ocean area with depths between 20 and 200 feet. Higher than that, and you have surface turbulence. Lower than that, and there is not enough light for lots of plants or fish. That narrow range of depths is a small sliver along our coasts. An area the size of Washington state, as mentioned in the article, between 20-200 feet, (without doing the math) would probably run along the entire west coast of the U.S. (assuming you could overcome the political hurdles of coastal development).
To make it scalable, the farms must be able to function in the open ocean, regardless of depth. If he could figure that out, it would truly be an aquatic revolution.
Well on the bright side, the south of the north sea (English, Belgian and Dutch coast and the area in between) is about that depth. That's an enormous farming are opening up there. Enough to feed Europe and then some...
The awareness about such initiatives is still very limited. This model could go mainstream with awareness and support from the Government.
This model could be especially useful in developing countries, with a coast line of course, though it was not clear from the article if this is applicable to fresh water bodies like lakes and rivers.
The cons or potential pitfalls/problems of this model have not been explored yet. It's something worth looking at.
This kind of farmers revolutions crop all the time in history, thanksfully! I'm a bit sceptical about the taste of seaweed having being in Japan already, but of course he is right.
Just see the land farmers revolutions, fighting industrial farming with new methods. Organic farming (the "bio" label), sellers collectives, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Previously they had to fight the big mills and banks, now the industry, the government and Monsanto just to keep the nature and ourself healthy.
"sceptical about the taste of seaweed having being in Japan..."
Thanks for settling that then! Nori is just the start. Kombu, a seaweed, is the basis of most soup broths in Japanese cooking, since it has a savory flavor. It would be surprising if there aren't other untapped delicious seaweeds out there for those of us who are not so set in our ways.
Another thing to remember is that tastes can be acquired.
When I was 12 I hated beer, blue cheese and olives. Nowadays I'd have that for dinner and count myself lucky.
I remember being unwilling to eat the coffee crisp out of my Halloween candy bag because it tasted too much like coffee. Now I drink 4 cups a day black as night.
I imagine that if you forced yourself for a week (or some timeline), you'd love the taste of whatever seaweed came along.
I think that the demonstrable environmental impact may be enough for some people to force themselves.
>I think that the demonstrable environmental impact may be enough for some people to force themselves.
The problem is that this doesn't necessarily scales up, it's very nice for over-priced niche markets like high end restaurants but if you are going to feed the world using this type of agriculture it can be just as destructive as any other type of mass production on a scale that can feed nations not to mention the world.
Good thing is that taste is acquired. Taste is the least important thing for an individual. For a silly population it's probably the best marketing tool. So yes, it will take time to adjust to the taste of the ocean.
Better that than killing ~3 trillion ocean animals yearly and destroying the oceanic ecosystems.
We should focus our attention on taking humans out of the food industry altogether. Here's a model I've been thinking about that should make it possible to create a free food society:
Not just free as in no cost, but free also as in liberty. Imagine not having to work for food. Food weaves a recursive economic penalty into all facets of society.
What's especially amazing about 3D vertical ocean farms is that they can provide nutrient inputs to the model illustrated above. Harvested, transported, and delivered automatically, with power from renewable resources.
If people want to grow their own food, that's fine. The point is, we have the technological prowess to create a society where we needn't spend time nor money on food out of necessity. Trading our productive years for food is a huge driving force behind capitalism, which has not proven itself to be the most environmentally-friendly regime (in terms of greenhouse gas emissions).
Think about this.
By the time viable nuclear fusion comes along (50 years?), we could have a self-maintaining, open source, free food infrastructure to solve one problem common to every living human: hunger. The energy consumption required to power the infrastructure could be switched from limited renewable sources to fusion sources to help support the global population (with power left over for some growth).
Fusion is by no means cheap. To quote myself from a different thread:
Even if/when we get commercially viable fusion, there's no reason why it should be significantly cheaper than energy from nuclear fission – you'll still need extremely complicated, high-precision, high-technology machines, generators, cooling towers, buildings, skilled workers, some amount of regulation, and disposal of nuclear waste. Oh, and if your fusion design is a tokamak, it might easily be more expensive than energy from fission reactors.
If you want electrical energy that's some orders of magnitude cheaper, you'll need a break-through in fundamental physics.
> there's no reason why it should be significantly cheaper than energy
According to Lockheed Martin, compact fusion has the potential to produce (modular?) 10MW reactors about the size of a semi-trailer truck. This reactor size reduction comes with a corresponding cost reduction without depending on new physics.
Lockheed Martin has yet to produce any evidence that they have achieved break-even power under laboratory conditions, not to mention a device that scales to MW levels or delivers cheap energy.
My point wasn't about Lockheed Martin per se. With ICF, MCF, and MTF, and many instances of those classes of fusion machines being constructed and tested globally, there is a path and plan to make nuclear fusion viable in the future. Doesn't matter that the first machine costs billions, the price will come down at each every subsequent iteration, even if it takes 100 years (or the discovery of room-temperature superconductors).
Back in February the Chinese EAST project (only $37 million USD) confined a plasma pulse of 50 million K for 102 seconds. Progress is slow, yes, but my point remains. When fusion is finally viable, we should strive to have an open infrastructure that liberates humanity from growing, harvesting, and distributing food. (Japan is well on the way, FWIW.)
Time and money are two compelling reasons. Another is climate change. Some estimates predict a decrease in certain crop yields (such as maize in South Africa) by up to 30%. OTOH, some crops will thrive with a higher CO2 concentration, while others will not tolerate the heat and coming droughts. Indoor farming eliminates global climate as a factor to growth.
> With ICF, MCF, and MTF, and many instances of those classes of fusion machines being constructed and tested globally, there is a path and plan to make nuclear fusion viable in the future. Doesn't matter that the first machine costs billions, the price will come down at each every subsequent iteration
You could have made the same argument about nuclear fission. Fission energy has been viable for decades, and yet we still don't have free energy. You didn't give any reasons why it would be different for fusion.
By the way, your reasoning is flawed: From your assumption that initial prototypes are expensive (which is valid), and the assumption that subsequent commercial designs will be less expensive (also most likely valid), you conclude that it will eventually be so cheap as to be essentially free (definitely invalid conclusion, with lots and lots of counterexamples).
No, population has stopped growing in western society (where the vast majority of population has access to food) a long time ago, and the number of children per family have consistently decreased from "many" to ~2 as wealth, food and healthcare has reached developing countries.
The notion r/K selection always comes to my mind, regardless of whether or not this is correct and/or a fair analogy (since humans are generally considered clear K-strategists in general). Still, when a human society develops, it's almost like switching from a "slightly-more-r-ish" strategy to a "slightly-more-K-ish" one, given the higher survival chances of children and also the corresponding higher expenditure of time and resources necessary to prepare then to succeed in their environment.
You don't need to plan out the details of a system that is (reliably and actually) self maintaining and relies on (cheap and clean) fusion. Both things would be such economic boons that they will be adopted essentially instantly.
I wasn't aware of how much more carbon can be trapped or ethanol produced with these plants. Also interesting that beneficial nutrients from fish mainly come from plants as well.
It sounds good, but nothing is zero impact. If an area the size of Washington state could feed the planet, it would imply that the solar energy hitting an area of that size is sufficient to produce all the food the planet needs. It seems unlikely to me, but I admit I haven't done any calculations (I don't even know how big Washington State is). More likely, those farms use "free food" that comes their way via ocean currents? So the effective harvesting area would be much bigger.
Washington State has an area of 184827 square kilometers.
247 acres to a square kilometer gives you 45652269 acres, article says 25 tonnes per acre, giving a yield of 1141306725 tons or about 160kg for every person on the planet.
This makes lots of assumptions but even if you half the efficiency you are in the ballpark of 80kg of nutritious plant matter per every person on the planet.
It would also work out at ~1600 shellfish per person on the planet.
It seems to me that it uses as food the extra CO2 and Nitrogen that we are dumping into the sea. So the actual impact would be a better CO2 and Nitrogen balance!
This is great, and I hope it get's opensourced and more widespread.
One thing of ecological importance that could be emphasized more, is that the shell of shell-fish represents a stable carbon sink. It's not so much that sea-gras extracts more anorganic carbon than land plants, because that organic carbon is likely going to end up as CO2 one way or another. But shells allow to effectively remove excessive carbon from the global carbon cycle.
> "Imagine a vertical underwater garden with hurricane-proof anchors on the edges..."
I love this idea but am sceptical on the idea of hurricane proof anchors. Hurricane resistant more likely. Although, in his defence, having these farms together with many anchors, makes them even more resistant. The author basically says this later in the article when he talks about the farms being storm breaks.
I love this idea but am sceptical on the idea of hurricane proof anchors.
Surface waves cause circular motions in water. The closer you are to the bottom of the ocean, the smaller these circles get. The tendency is that the farther underwater you are, the easier it is to resist wave action. The issue isn't whether one can make things hurricane proof. The issue is the economic feasibility of making something sufficiently hurricane proof.
Very interesting idea, I wonder how is it affected by pollution from ships. Ship pollute much more than cars because they burn the lowest quality of fuel and somehow managed to withstand regulatory pressure.
So is this 3d farming still producing great food if all the water is polluted by ship waste?
A couple of years ago I researched how viable it would be to farm noble crayfish. I just figured it would be kind of cool to have ponds filled with them. My napkin calculation was "lol no" but I never gave it a real thought. Was mostly wondering about interesting uses for a pond :P
There were some prohibitive issues with diseases as well.
If by chance anyone ITT does small scale freshwater "farming" I'd be interested in hearing some stories. Breaking even or a slight loss would be nice as well as I think it could be an interesting hobby (like beekeeping)
"What is most important, we guarantee to purchase 80 percent of their crops for the first five years at triple the market rate."
I assume 5 years at today's market rates. That would give them 5 years to stimulate a demand for the products? If that demand doesn't materialise, then we just end up with another crushing defeat for the worlds fishermen.
I'm extremely sympathetic to many of the ideas (though, maybe not the forward contracts), but I fear that if they are not profitable with a smaller, shorter, purchase support scheme, this is doomed.
>Our farmers don’t own their patch of ocean; they own only the right to grow shellfish and seaweeds there, which means that anyone can boat, fish, or swim on their farms
Although this sounds useful, it also sounds like the kind of thing that industrialised agriculture profiteers (eg Monsanto) will go out of their way to stop. :(
Wonder what strategy places like Monsanto could use for that purpose? First approach that springs to mind is trying to discredit the approach... probably combined with something legal like trying to get it banned outright because "food safety".
Hopefully the industrialised agriculture profiteers can be warded off long enough for this to get legs. :)
Fascinating on many fronts. One of the most interesting quotes: """According to the Department of Energy, if you were to take a network of our farms equaling half the size of the state of Maine, you could replace all the oil in the United States."""
I also love the general idea of using oysters as "cleaning as a service" (Bronx river). Pretty cool approach to give up some food farming for cleaning the water.
This is really really cool. I especially like the part about having two different types of farms, one for food production, one for soaking up pollutants from waterways.
The 3D vertical farm reminds me something a bit tangential, but similar that you can do at your own home. It is called window farms: http://our.windowfarms.org/
The idea is to use recycle matters to build a home garden. Nice and innovative. Also, its build has been open sourced. Worth to take a look.
I'd also like to see sections of ocean protected like we protect our national parks. No fishing, no motorized boats. Sort of make them "reservoirs" where natural life can be undisturbed.
Some countries like New Zealand and Australian have these - called Marine Reserves and limit commercial activities. They normally are in areas of great diversity (Milford Sounds) or international importance (great barrier reef).
or, like here in Perth, just off the coast of a major city.
There's a lot of local controversy because people believe that sharks living in the protected reserves are a danger to the people swimming off the city's beaches.
But politically this sort of conservation is very fragile. It's fine as long as no-one with any power wants to do anything profitable in the protected areas. But previous governments have caved in easily under commercial pressure.
It's also a human activity to restrict human activities so that they don't interfere in undesirable ways with non-human activities. All natural of course.
I mean, I'm totally for trashing the environment when we don't need it anymore, but right now it's species-wide suicide.
This is excellent, in multiple ways. The main things humans are adding here are a) pollution and b) good strong fishing line. We're pretty good at both of those things...
Very interesting article DiabloD3, thanks for sharing. Really hope to see some interesting food blogs about things that you can cook with these kinds of crops!
really reminds me of the 'tangles' in Anathem (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem), based on the same principle of growing mutually supporting foods side-by-side
Huh. Well I live in Taiwan and people are always looking for new ways to farm. Wonder if it'd work here! The storm resistance is particularly interesting because they get hit every year here.
Mussels are grown along the West Coast as well as the East. They can be farmed in tidal rivers. Molluscs such as mussels, oysters, and clams thrive in intertidal zones and it's areas such as these where you would harvest them in their natural state.
My folks are involved with farming mussels in New Zealand. The farms are in a river mouth, putting the nitrogen and phosphate runoff from farms to good use. The phytoplankton they eat is replenished 500m down-current from the mussels.
There's one major risk - the 'spat' - the baby mussels used to start a vertical mussel line - are harvested when they're washed up on a beach. Sometimes, there's no spat and no one knows why. The concern is that climate change will result in less, or no spat, and then no more mussel aquaculture.