Regenerative aquacultureWhy high value should be placed on producing low-trophic seafood

Returning to France after 13 years of trying to improve the sustainability of Chinese agriculture, Macquet was struck by how one of France’s most sustainable food production sectors – oyster farming – wasn’t inspiring the interest and recognition he was convinced it deserved.

In Macquet’s eyes, a food production sector that brings as many environmental benefits as oysters should not only be widely celebrated, but should also attract entrants from a generation that prides itself on ethical eating and trying to reverse the ravages inflicted on biodiversity by humanity. 

However, he is also aware that this idealism needs to be tempered by an awareness of, and guidance through, some of the challenges – both physical and regulatory – that oyster farmers face. And, as a result, he establish Le Paysan Marin – an organisation dedicated to forming a link between existing and aspiring shellfish and seaweed producers, in order to ensure a rejuvenation of regenerative aquaculture. First in France and then, potentially, further afield. 

“We’d like to be the junction between the traditional oyster farmers, especially those who are trying to sell their farms and new actors who want to do something more – maybe including some polyculture, or some seaweed. The climatic and economic challenges ahead differ from what the current farms were built for,” Macquet explains.

“Supporting  experienced farmers to use their final professional years to pave the way for new more resilient models is a way to both facilitate their sale and de-risk the investment of these new actors. It can take up to three years in France to operate an administrative transition to new marine production methods or species. Three years that old timers may have but most newcomers don’t. Such transition supporting structures already exist in agriculture but there is none in marine aquaculture… for now,” he adds.

“We’re also trying to build up a community of actors: people who want to grow, people who want to transform, people who want to research, people want to valorise. It’s not just the production that needs to evolve, it’s the entire value chain,” he continues. 

A startup is born

Macquet’s interest in bivalve farming was piqued on his return to France from China, when he moved to Oléron – one of the key hubs of the French oyster industry. 

Indeed, he was so inspired that he decided to take a course France’s official French sea farmer certification training – a mandatory step for anyone wishing to apply to farm on the French public domain – with the initial intention of setting up his own farm. However, he soon realised that traditional oyster and mussel farmers were very product-oriented with fragile business models – while he was convinced that they would benefit from being more impact-focused and that, through the adoption of new technologies, could create more appealing, and less physically demanding, employment opportunities for a younger generation.

He duly consulted with Benjamin Denjean, a fellow Frenchman who he’d worked with in China, and they decided to establish an organisation that could help to fuel this transition.

“The core idea is to focus on primary producers who are taking care of the seascape. We want them to be managers of the shoreline, managers of the marine ecosystem and responsible economic contributors,” he explains. 

With an initial focus on education activities, the duo aim to change the negative perception of aquaculture in France and highlight positive examples of sustainable practices – through webinars, university courses, and crash courses on regenerative aquaculture, such as can be offered by bivalve farms.  

“Aquaculture. If you drop that word in any conversation here in France then you get people picturing the worst, most intensive version of it. And I'm not just talking about the general public, but even the policymakers in Paris. And they don't want to get involved with that. But that is not what aquaculture in France is about. Seventy percent of our aquaculture is oysters and mussels,” he observes. 

As a result, he would like to see aquaculture entering more mainstream education.

“I feel that there are already quite a lot of good options in terms of aquaculture technical training information in France, but I think there’s a connection missing with other less marine sciences-oriented training centres and universities, where there is not that much of an idea that aquaculture can be an option,” Macquet explains. 

“In engineering schools, business schools, IT schools, for example, aquaculture is never really touched on or considered as a sector to build a career in. At the same time French aquaculture has a lot of needs extending beyond production work. Connecting these needs and opportunities to students who are outside of the blue economy world is another of our aims,” he elaborates. 

Macquet and Denjean are keen to attract people from various backgrounds to the field, emphasising that aquaculture needs digital, management, design and communication skills, not just the strength and stamina required to turn oyster bags. And their initial outreach suggests fertile terrain for their ideas. 

“We’ve developed an 8-hour crash course on regenerative aquaculture. It covers founding principles, exploring international examples along the value chain, promoting entrepreneurship and arranging for group work focused on creating a regenerative aquaculture company. It ends with a pitching session, as if groups were to join an incubator,” explains Macquet.

The first one took place at UnilaSalle Rennes – an environmental engineering school that with no real aquaculture connections. Over 50 engineering students joined the course and eight projects were created focusing on various aspects of production, restoration and transformation.

“I was really impressed by how quickly students were appropriating these concepts. What surprised me was that almost all of them aim to do something at a very local scale: working with the Britanny oyster farmers, offering their support for salt marshes, or working to combat ocean acidification with seaweed,” Macquet reflects. 

They have also hosted regular "Aquoiculture?" webinars in which two industry professionals compare views on an aquaculture related topic.

The future of the industry

Looking ahead, Macquet believes that without a successful generational transition, there’s likely to be a continued consolidation of France’s oyster sector, as the larger oyster farming companies buy out smaller ones, which is likely to be coupled with a growing emphasis on efficiency rather than stewardship. 

However, he is determined to maintain a space for smaller players to help ensure economic and environmental resilience.

“I see regenerative aquaculture is an aquaculture practice that has more positive impacts than negative ones around the farm site. And at the same time, there is still a need for economic regeneration too,” he points out.

Inspiring examples

Macquet takes inspiration from a number of European companies and initiatives that he feels are both helping to drive marine regeneration and to improve public perception of aquaculture.

These include Koastal, in Sweden, which is giving former fishermen in the Baltic the chance to continue to earn a living on the water despite the collapse of the fishing industry, by creating a network of seaweed farms.

“The guys are just happy to be back on the water, happy to have a professional excuse to use the skills that they acquired through a lifetime on the water,” he reflects. 

Another is Havhøst, a Danish company that has developed a series of multi-trophic aquaculture platforms – featuring oysters, mussels and seaweed – that they install in coastal locations that are accessible to large numbers of people.

“The goal is not production, but to bring regenerative aquaculture closer, so people from the cities can visit and gain a better understanding of it. It’s something that we’re working with them to adapt to French harbours,” explains Macquet. 

Closer to home, he’s been particularly impressed by La Ferme des 4 Marais, on Île de Ré, which is growing ulva,  clams, Salicornia, oysters (which they sell for ongrowing) and French native shrimp (both for consumption and to a local aquarium) in a salt marsh-based integrated aquaculture system.  

“He optimises everything in a very compact space and that is a format that I would love to see replicated in in many places with adaptation of the crops, but using the same general principles,” says Macquet.

And he’s also been working with ARPROE, an association that’s working to restore native oysters, and then hand harvest them – in order to restore the reef, while also generating incomes –  around île d'Houat in Brittany. 

“It’s a cool initiative that’s blending the lines between marine ecological restoration, fishing and aquaculture,” Macquet reflects.

Nature-based credits for regenerative farming?

While the business cases of many of his favourite initiatives are quite fragile, he holds out hope that some form of nature-based credit system will be introduced to the marine sector soon to help to incentivise restorative aquaculture projects – perhaps based on the nature framework system Vera has developed for restorative projects on land.

“There is already an existing model, but we need to adapt it to regenerative aquaculture. That’s also something we’re working on,” he observes.