Regulating the local environmental impact of intensive marine fish farming - I. The concept of the MOM system (Modelling Ongrowing fish farms Monitoring)

The paper describes the concept of a management system called MOM (Modelling-Ongrowing fish farms-Monitoring) which may be used to adjust the local environmental impact of marine fish farms to the holding capacity of the sites. The concept is based on integrating the elements of environmental impact assessment, monitoring of impact and environmental quality standards (EQS) into one system. The amount of monitoring is dependent on the level of the environmental impact. Two terms are introduced: (1) the degree of exploitation, which is an expression of how much the site is being utilised, and (2) the level of monitoring, which determines the amount of monitoring depending on the environmental impact. For Norwegian conditions, a monitoring programme, including EQS, has been developed concerning the impact on the sediment under fish farms. It consists of three types of investigations of increasing elaboration and accuracy. A model, which simulates the environmental impact on a site given information about the farm's size and production and the hydrodynamic conditions and topography of the site, has been developed but not yet tested. The model and the monitoring programme with EQS are only briefly described, but will be published later. The MOM system should help to maintain satisfactory environmental conditions in and around fish farms and may be a valuable tool in site selection and coastal zone management. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.