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OS Aqua

Marine Modelling

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  • Develop an integrated model for use in environmental impact assessments of aquaculture in the Open Sea of the Cypriot territorial waters. The model will include: 

    1. Holistic approach to the marine ecosystem.

    2. Evaluation of the effect of nutrients released from aquaculture. 

    3. The dynamic system of the whole open sea marine aquaculture in the study area and its global effect in the environment. 

    4. Practical applications that will assist in decision making about the location or the capacity of the cage farm aquaculture units. 

  • To develop an information system that will be able to record environmental parameters.

Spatial Planning

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  • Marine Spatial Plan development to designate zones of Open Sea aquaculture areas and building on existing work commissioned to map the near shore regions for aquaculture and a dialogue with the other users of maritime space. The National Marine Spatial Plan of Cyprus will reduce environmental impacts and conflicts with other coastal/marine activities as it will promote marine aquaculture in open sea fish cages.

Station Design

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  • Design aquaculture stations based on physical, financial, topographical parameters and select fish species considering state-of-the-art in aquacultural technologies.

Site monitoring 

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  • Protocols and tools development for cost effective ongoing monitoring of offshore aquaculture stations in Cyprus in order to: (1) promote the viability of the investment and (2) ensure a good ecological standard (EQS) for the marine environment in accordance with Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) whilst taking into account interactions with other users of the offshore zone (hydrocarbon rigs, wind farms, maritime traffic, etc)

Financial and Legal framework ​

 

  • Investigate the financial feasibility of expanding aquaculture activities  further away from coast. Succeeding in this endeavour would significantly expand a profitable business sector leading to significant increase in food exports. 

    1. Economic implications from growing particular finfish species at the targeted Open Sea area(s). 

    2. Economic and operational implications from adopting particular cage and mooring scenarios at the targeted Open Sea area(s) with specific sea floor characteristics. 

    3. Market review and sales management best practices for the targeted finfish species. 

    4. Financial implications from specific legal/ regulatory structure. 

    5. Economic effect from potential financial incentive schemes for such economic activities. 

    6. Merge all aforementioned information into a robust economic analysis; and 

    7. Risk analysis to investigate the robustness of the economic model developed under varying input parameters. 

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