Aquatic Biosystems: Applications in Aquacultural Engineering as a Sustainable Technology

Aquaculture has been supporting human demands for fish products for centuries and is an important industry worldwide. Global production from aquaculture has been increasing steadily, having more than doubled in the last decade; aquaculture now supplies one-third of seafood consumed worldwide. However, the expansion of aquaculture has been accompanied by degradation of the natural environment, especially on marine aquaculture. Direct impacts of fisheries and aquaculture are habitat modification, collection of wild seedstock, changes of food webs, introduction of nonnative fish species, and diseases that harm wild fish populations, and nutrient pollution. According to the FAO, major issues that need to be addressed are problems with access to proper technology and financial resources, together with environmental impacts and diseases. Some others argue that further increases in aquaculture production will come mainly from further investment in biotechnology or nanotechnology ranging from protein expression and DNA vaccines, water filtration and remediation, nanoparticles, gene delivery (and chips) to transgenic technologies. The purpose of this chapter is to present the progress in the research about to get a sustainable aquaculture.