Biological Resources
The idea of biological resources most likely rooted within the readers as well as the author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In this novel, written by Jules Verne, an entire ship of people during the 1800's went out into the ocean living inside the first conceptual submarine and depended completely on the ocean for all their material needs. They even went as far as to make life's luxuries from the ocean, such as cigars. Even though not all of the resources stated in this novel are possible or even realistic in real life, many of them are. We have also discovered many new ways to use the ocean to our benefit. The ocean is teeming with life and marine resources, some of which we have discovered but many that have yet to be known. If you would like extensive information on Biological Resources click here...
There are many different categories of marine resources such as spatial, mineral, animal, chemical, botanical and energy resources. Biological resources, which is what will be discussed here, are mainly animal and plant resources. We are interested in these resources mostly for their nutritional and food value. The ocean has many edible resources that can keep many people well-fed if we utilize them. This group of biological resources can be then split up into two main groups; resources from the marine environment and resources from a freshwater environment. There are two ways to utilize the biological resources from these environments; open water catch or fishing, and farming.
Fishing or open water catch in the marine environme
nt brings back things such as abalone, oysters, mussels, clams,
swordfish, sharks, anchovies, tuna, shrimp, and various types of schooling
fish. In the fresh water environment fishing brings back things such as
many types of salmon, trout, bass, sturgeon, and carp.
Open water fishing has another aspect that is of definite
concern. This concept is called maximum sustainable yield, which is basically
the amount of catch that can be remove from an area of a certain population
without damaging that population's natural growth curve. This puts a great
stress on the environment if not obeyed as well as being a large risk for
the fishing industry. If over the maximum sustainable yield is removed from
the ocean then the e
cosystem and environment
is damaged as well as the isolated population. This is what leads us to
the idea of mariculture and a controlled environment of one specific species.
This eliminates the possibility of removing over the maximum sustainable
yield because you are no longer dealing with an ecosystem.
Farming is more species specific when dealing with water creatures. Salt water farming is called mariculture and it farms creatures such as abalone, oysters, kelp, and scallops. Fresh water farming is called aquaculture, this kind of farming is mostly done with upstream swimming fish such as salmon.
There are both positive aspects and negative aspects to mariculture. The positive aspects, one of which is discussed above, are lack of a maximum sustainable yield problem, lack of natural predators, controllable environment, and no unpredictability on the amount of catch per day. The negative aspect is that the ecosystem is unbalanced and there is only one species living there. This means that the chances of infection are great and if there is one it will wipe out the entire population because there is no other species there to balance it. For information on the legalities click here.... Abalone farms are a perfect example of this unbalanced culturing of animals.
