Steven R. Dudgeon1 and Janet Kübler1
1Department of Biology, California State University, Northridge, CA USA
Globally, there is increasing interest in aquaculture of low trophic species with the combined goals of generating products and generating positive effects on ecosystems. Regenerative agriculture on land, focuses on generating soil fertility, through agricultural practices and assesses success in metrics including soil depth and organic content. Regenerative aquaculture in seawater, is generally associated with ecosystem services that reduce seawater fertility (eutrophication) such as nutrient bioextraction and filtration of particulate organic matter. Those unidirectional processes improve water quality in eutrophic areas but may shift a system toward oligotrophy and deplete plankton populations in less fertile areas. Thriving in a changing climate requires resilience. We suggest additional metrics of ecosystem regeneration to assess the effect of aquaculture on ecosystem resilience, based on system characteristics that promote return from perturbations, or ecosystem recovery. Those include species diversity, network connectance, and dampening variability of production. In practice, measures of spill over effects of aquaculture on local biodiversity, enhanced linkages among species and stability of nontarget population can be metrics of regenerative effects of aquaculture on ecosystem resilience.