Published on: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 |
THE cost of protecting coral reefs and mangroves amounts to a fraction of their estimated global value.
According to a United Nations Environment Programme report, the average management cost of such area is less than 0.2 per cent of the estimated global value of coral reefs and mangroves, based mainly on the services they provide such as shoreline protection, fisheries, tourism and recreation.
Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Vice Chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Noh Dalimin said this in his address at the conference.
His speech was read by Prof. Dr Ridzwan Abdul Rahman, Director of the Centre for Research and Innovation, UMS.
According to Mohd Noh, one of the worst forms of human interactions occurs with coastal coral reefs and mangroves.
The problems facing sustainable development of marine resources are global in nature and call for global action and cooperation in the search for solutions.
"At a time when world climate is changing and we notice perceptible change in the atmosphere and the sea, a global action is needed," he said.
Mohd Noh also said the world production of captured fisheries has levelled off after attaining a peak of 88.67 mil tonnes a year in the early 90s.
"It is the expanding aquaculture industry that increased the global fisheries production to over 140 mil tonnes a year," he said.
According to Mohd Noh, demand continues to grow and even this much supply is inadequate. So obviously, the aquaculture industry has to grow to bridge the gap between supply and demand.
Sea ranching holds an enormous potential of supplementing the current production to meet the increasing seafood demand.
More industries will come up as public demand grows with continuing revelations about the health benefits of seafood, Mohd Noh said.
Medical research has recently proved that fish is more effective at preventing sudden death due to heart attack and lowering cholesterol.
"The fish also does not disturb the liver functions that anti-cholesterol drugs generally do ?I think the world has found in Omega-3 in fish oil an answer to some major heart ailments."
He also said the time has come for multidisciplinary and high-tech industrial aquaculture driven by wind energy and managed with a high degree of automation and robots that are robust enough to do high-risk operations in the open sea.
"We need to examine the practical feasibility of harnessing energy from windmills for open aquaculture systems.
"I was told that countries bordering the North Sea have developed a synergy of offshore wind farms and various techniques of offshore aquaculture and that a combination of windmill with submerged long-line systems for mussels, oysters and seaweeds has become operational," he said, adding scientists invited to the conference are welcome to discuss the topic.
That will be the true spirit of synergy between oceanography and marine aquaculture, he added.
