Shellfish ICSR 2011
Conference makes case to re-evaluate shellfish
JANET H BROWN and LIZ ASHTON report from ‘Shellfish Our Undervalued Resource’, held in Stirling on 23rd-27th August
Delegates at ICSR 2011, held in the Management Centre at the University of Stirling
Shellfish are more than a foodstuff, and are also a living resource
THE theme for the 14th meeting of the International Conference on Shellfi sh Restoration was ‘Shell- fi sh, our Undervalued Resource’ – an appropriate theme for the UK audience, although it may have raised the eyebrows of some Ameri- can delegates, as shellfi sh are more highly prized in the USA. However, as conference organiser Janet Brown said in her opening speech, all countries have very different attitudes to shellfi sh – in the UK they’re not even properly appre- ciated as food, as a signifi cant proportion of our harvest is exported abroad. The theme was chosen to highlight the fact that shellfi sh are more than a foodstuff, but are also a living resource that provides value in a number of dif- ferent ways. The real question is to what extent can we restore these services lost from the severely diminished shellfi sh resources worldwide?
The organisers had assembled an inter- esting group of keynote speakers to look at the ecosystem services of shellfi sh, shellfi sh as ecosystem engineers and their role as habitat providers. These
Fish Farmer September/October 2011 34
talks were then followed by a whole day specifi cally devoted to oysters.
Services
Melanie Austen of MBL, Plymouth was the opening keynote speaker. She ex- plained the concept of ecosystem services – the benefi cial outputs from ecosystems, in terms of provisioning, regulating, cul- tural and supporting roles. Obviously the case for shellfi sh in terms of provisioning is well established. It is the overempha- sis on provisioning that has denuded natural stocks so dramatically, and the extent of this was fully elucidated by Mark Spalding of The Nature Conserv- ancy on the fi nal day of the conference. Putting a value on these ecosystem services is clearly not easy, and Austen explained how present value does not provide a true picture, since these servic- es can continue into the future. However, even presenting the calculated present values for ecosystem services provided by marine biodiversity gives an idea where shellfi sh might come in terms of these wider valuations.
Having explained the complexities
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Photography by Craig Burton, Seafish Scotland
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