Environmental pollution and marine aquaculture ecosystem health assessment

Recently, attentions have been paid on human health and seafood safety, while it is strongly related to the aquaculture ecosystem health state. Consensus on aquaculture ecosystem health assessment has been arrived. In this paper, the health state of the most important culturing area in Zhejiang, China has been evaluated by the application of conceptual and numerical models. In the conceptual model, links between different threats and the marine aquaculture ecosystem have been outlined. The results turn out that human activities, self-pollution, chemical abuse and climate changes etc. have been the most serious threats. It is also concluded that not only physico-chemical conditions and biological indicators but also economy (social) components can influence the aquaculture ecosystem health. And finally, as a reflection of the overall aquaculture ecosystem condition, aquaculture environmental carrying capacity has been identified as an important indicator. Numerical models were applied to determine the aquaculture environmental carrying capacity and the nutrient concentration distribution.