By-catch in no-fed aquaculture: exploiting mussel seed persistently and extensively disturbs the accompanying assemblage

Abstract

Abstract Although aquaculture sometimes lessens the negative effects of fishing by lowering the need to capture wild animals and plants, some aquaculture practices still require the exploitation of wild populations. A largely overlooked case is the use of wild populations to provide seed to sea farms. Mussel farming in Northwest Spain involve the capture of thousands of tons of young mussels (0.5–2 cm long) from the nearby rocky intertidal every year to supply floating rafts. Despite its volume, the impact of this activity on other sessile organisms remains unassessed. To fill this gap in our knowledge, we monthly monitored the sessile intertidal assemblage of five protected and six exploited sites during the closed season in 2016 following a nested sampling plan. Like the by-catch typical of other fisheries, harvesting young mussels for aquaculture was detrimental to the abundance and diversity of the associated sessile assemblage not directly targeted by this activity. Coverage and richness were also significantly lowered by the exploitation of mussel seed, and the community structure of protected and exploited sites was significantly different. These differences continued until the next open season, suggesting that the closed season was too short for the recovery of the associated non-target sessile assemblage. Given the size of the local mussel industry, the incomplete recovery along the closed season implies that mussel aquaculture must be putting a sustained pressure on a sizeable portion of the rocky intertidal of Northwest Spain.