The aquaculture sector has been growing rapidly during the last decades, and is expected to play a continuously larger role in supplying the food needed for an increasing world population. During the same period, satellite monitoring of coastal waters and of coastal land-use has been steadily progressing, increasing the quality of the estimations of an increasing number of parameters. Various projects have attempted to develop satellite data applications in support of aquaculture, however, most often as a limited activity inside a wider project, and exploiting only some of the Earth Observation capacities that could benefit aquaculture.

Objectives

The main goal of the workshop was to define a detailed set of user requirements for the future ESA Aquaculture project, including priority information products and services and priority regions of interest. The project will target users both inside and outside Europe, e.g. in Africa, Persian Gulf, Central- and South-America.

Representatives from government agencies and administrations in charge of the aquaculture sector or in charge of the marine coastal environment, aquaculture producers, companies providing products and services to the aquaculture industry, NGOs and the aquaculture R&D community, were invited to attend the workshop to learn more about the potential of Earth Observation to support aquaculture and help define the needs and requirements.