The aquaculture sector has been growing rapidly during the last decades, and is expected to play a continuously larger role in supplying the food needed for an increasing world population. During the same period, satellite monitoring of coastal waters and of coastal land-use has been steadily progressing, increasing the quality of the estimations of an increasing number of parameters. Various projects have attempted to develop satellite data applications in support of aquaculture, however, most often as a limited activity inside a wider project, and exploiting only some of the Earth Observation capacities that could benefit aquaculture.
It is therefore timely to channel state-of-the-art competence from the various, relevant Earth Observation technologies and techniques into one activity dedicated to aquaculture exclusively, in order to take a next, important step towards operational services for e.g.:
* locating optimal sites for aquaculture;
* monitoring production conditions and threats (algal blooms, jellyfish, ...);
* monitoring environmental impacts
ESA's future Aquaculture project will aim at developing, demonstrating and validating information services in support of aquaculture management exploiting state-of-the-art remote sensing, modelling and data integration methods. It will address needs of users in Europe and internationally, including
* Companies directly involved in aquaculture production;
* Institutional and industrial providers of products and services to the aquaculture sector;
* Government agencies and administrations in charge of the aquaculture sector;
* Government agencies, administrations and NGOs involved in the monitoring of environmental effects of aquaculture.
A 1½ -day workshop will be organised in Oslo from 31st of March to 1st of April 2011, and will bring together users and experts in order to define a set of user requirements which will thereafter be used as the basis for the new project.
It is planned to start up the new project later this year following a tender restricted to bidders from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. In the project we would like to see Users also from other countries including outside Europe.