There is a great demand for more food from the ocean as the global human population rises while their buying power continues to increase in the decades to come. Marine aquaculture delivers seafood with nutritious protein and essential lipid-rich food and is believed to be a promising means for increasing future global food production.

Further expansion of marine aquaculture requires new production concepts along with supporting service actors and industries. It is an overall goal to increase sustainable seafood production from the oceans and to establish a roadmap describing a main strategy to reach that goal. Marine aquaculture is a relatively young industry, facing broad challenges of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Among others there is a need to improve animal welfare and public perception. Moreover, as most cultured fishes in the sea are carnivore animals with high nutritional requirements, provision or nutritionally adequate feed is a main challenge.

The present Research Topic covers two main aspects of the value chain for a further expansion of global marine aquaculture, with a main focus on finfish, but no other group excluded:

Session 1- Production - New production concepts and engineering challenges for marine aquaculture 2050

The diversity of production concepts for industrial marine fish farming has increased over the last decades. Cage technologies have up to these days been most common because it has been biologically and economically successful for coastal aquaculture. Some key and economically successful companies have more recently initiated exploration and testing of new concept avenues, among others stimulated by research as well as Governments and financial support. Main new concepts for large scale fish farming are open ocean based, land based, closed and semi-closed systems in the sea, submersible cage systems for deep-water, and many other related and combinations of production systems. Cage production and its further evolution is however still believed to be most important for coastal aquaculture for the nearest future.

Session 2 - Service and support - Services and supporting industries for marine aquaculture

Industrial marine aquaculture is more than production concepts and engineering. Modern aquaculture is made profitable through long lasting and broad scientific and industrial R&D efforts of services and other supporting industries over the last decades. Among such important related and supporting aspects are feed developments and feed production, health aspects and environmental influence, together with many other more specialized aspects and their challenges. Most aspects of services and supporting activities interact indirectly with engineering, but has their own scientists, actors and industries.

The main objective of the Research Topic “Towards an Expansion of Sustainable Global Marine Aquaculture – Volume2” is to present information on R&D efforts and applications of new aquaculture concepts, services and supporting activities that can support a further sustainable development and expansion of marine aquaculture. Papers on, but not limited to, the below exemplified topics of sea-based aquaculture was invited for the Aquanor 2025 conference:

Session 1 Production

• Open Ocean fish farming, in open national and international waters.
• Land based fish farming, including on-growing
• Further development and use of RAS technologies
• Closed and semi-closed systems in the sea, for all or some developmental stages
• Submersible cage-like systems
• Systems for integrated multitrophic production
• New developments of cage systems for coastal aquaculture
• Combinations and other related systems.

Session 2 - Services and support

• Sea lice and other biological interactions
• New feed concepts, acknowledging limited availability of new feed resources with protein - long chain n-3 fatty acids.
• Environmental interaction of pen production systems with surface water and benthic ecosystems
• Environmental aspects of new farming system
• Instruments, ICT and AI methods for sustainable aquaculture development
• New upcoming maritime aspects and logistics

The Research Topic "Towards an expansion of sustainable global marine aquaculture – Volume 2" with the above sessions established by Frontiers of Marine Science (FMARS) formed part of the AQUANOR 2025 conference with the above describes sessions. Authors having their submitted papers accepted for presentation in the AQUANOR 2025 conference were invited to submit their papers to the present Research Topic. The papers have accordingly relevance for the described sessions, and the following categories can be accepted:

• Papers selected for oral presentations presentation in the AQUANOR 2025 conference.
• Papers not selected for oral presentation at AQUANOR 2025, but which still have high scientific quality.

Impact

Frontiers in Marine Science

Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources