The demand for seafood products on the global market is rising, particularly in Asia, as affluence and appreciation of the health benefits of seafood increase. This is coupled with a capture fishery that, at best, is set for stagnation and, at worst, significant collapse. Global aquaculture is the fastest growing sector of the food industry and currently accounts for approximately 45.6% of the world’s fish consumption. However, the rapid development of extensive and semi-extensive systems, particularly intensive marine-fed aquaculture, has resulted in worldwide concern about the potential environmental, economic, and social impacts of such systems. In recent years, there has been a significant amount of research conducted on the development of sustainable saltwater-based food production systems through mechanical (e.g., recirculatory aquaculture (RAS) systems) methods and ecosystem-based approaches (e.g., integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA)). This review article will examine the potential negative impacts of monocultural saltwater aquaculture operations and review established (RAS) and novel (IMTA; constructed wetlands; saltwater aquaponics) saltwater-based food production systems and discuss their (potential) contribution to the development of sustainable and environmentally-friendly systems.

The pennate diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum is a model organism able to synthesise industrially-relevant molecules. Large-scale monocultures are prone to bio-contamination, however, little is known about the identity of the invading organisms. To gain insight into the bacterial community associated with diatoms, we translated the complexity of a natural system into reproducible experiments where we investigated the microbiome of P. tricornutum cultures. The results revealed a dynamic bacterial community that changed over time and in differing media conditions. We propose a network of putative interactions between P. tricornutum and the main bacterial factions, which is translated into a set of ordinary differential equations constituting a computational dynamic model. The proposed mathematical model is able to capture the population dynamics, further supporting the hypothesised interactions. The interdisciplinary approach implemented provides a framework for understanding the dynamics of diatom-associated microbial communities, and provides a foundation for further systematic investigations of host-microbe interactions.