ABSTRACT
Water, air, soil, and aquatic organisms can be viewed as overlapping compartments in the pond environment. Substances exchange between these compartments through their closely associated interfaces. Aquaculture, with its intimacy of contact with receiving waters, should include evaluation and mitigation of potential environmental risks. Such action will reduce constraints on development by this emerging industry and protect it from ineffective or unnecessary restrictions. Other water users, such as intensive agriculturists and wastewater managers, have been forced to consider the environmental concerns of society and the restrictions on both the characteristics and the amount of effluent released and the type of treatment required. The aquaculture industry may be in the process of following a similar pathway as it responds to environmental legislation while incorporating its own sense of environmental responsibility and awareness. Aquacultural scientists from industrialized nations, where environmental legislation may be well established, are helping to shape aquacultural practices in countries where legislation and environmental concern may be just emerging. Although regulation to limit the environmental impacts of aquaculture may be defensible, such restrictions have often been unnecessarily burdensome, complex, and purposeless. Surveys of U.S. aquaculturists indicate that aspects of the permitting process and operational regulations are often inappropriate extensions of regulations designed for other forms of agriculture. The aquaculture community may find it necessary to lobby and build influence within the political community, while conducting convincing environmental research, to effect changes in these regulations.
