Aquaculture and tourism can both be important industries for economic development, particularly in isolated geographies endowed with natural beauty. However, spatial conflict can arise, particularly along scenic coastlines, such as that in Oban, Scotland. This area is notable for the frequent overlap between marine tours and cage culture sites, with tours passing by or near these aquaculture locations. This study aims to understand whether tourists who encounter aquaculture operations during these tours have positive attitudes toward aquaculture–tourism integration, which refers to the favourable perception and acceptance of the coexistence of aquaculture and tourism activities, and whether this exposure influences their intention to consume locally farmed aquatic products. A face-to-face survey was conducted to recruit 200 tourists who experienced marine tours in Oban, Scotland. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified three types of tourists based on tourism motivation: (1) Multiple motivations, (2) “Relaxers”, and (3) “Outgoing nature enthusiasts”. Among the three tourist segments, the “Relaxers” were particularly unfamiliar with the concept of farming aquatic food. In general, the majority of tourists were positive about being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours. The results of the structural equation modelling analysis indicated that attitudes towards being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours mediate the relationship between attitudes towards aquaculture and the intention to eat locally farmed aquatic food. Motivational tourism factors, socialisation, and learning positively and significantly influenced attitudes towards being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours. Compared to age, gender, education, income, and travel frequency, only tourists’ dietary patterns significantly influenced behavioural intention. The findings suggest that aquaculture might serve as a potential site for social knowledge exchange, which might be crucial not only for tourism to be successful but also for promoting aquaculture’s social acceptability. The results can be used to inform policymakers, marketers, and aquaculture/tourism practitioners to promote sustainable aquaculture tourism in Scotland or similar sites where tourism and aquaculture coexist.

Microalgae is a promising raw material for several commercial applications however, the increased production costs remain the main challenge of algal cultivation today. To address this and to further enhance the financial and environmental sustainability of aquaculture, we developed a low-cost floating bioreactor for the cultivation of phytoplankton in-situ utilizing the excessive nutrients that are released by marine aquaculture. The bioreactors were deployed next to fish cages at two fish farms located in areas with different trophic status and the natural plankton community was used as inoculum. Our scope was to examine the growth potential of natural phytoplankton communities and to identify the most capable planktonic groups for cultivation in-situ. Our findings indicated that most groups of the natural phytoplankton community had increased positive growth rates inside the bioreactors, especially the diatom and OraNano (presumably cryptophytes) populations. OraNano cells increased in size, particularly at the oligotrophic site, increasing further the productivity of this group. Chaetoceros sp. was the dominant diatom species in the oligotrophic area while Pseudonitzschia sp., Leptocylindrus sp. and Nitzschia sp. were the most common species at the mesotrophic site. The cultivation of microalgae in the field can offer several significant advantages, while further optimization of the bioreactors’ design and the use of specific microbial consortia as inoculums could further increase the biomass productivity and bioremediation potential of this approach.