Mariculture in the context of "Fish tank"

Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lotus). Aquaculture involves cultivating Freshwater, brackish water, and saltwater populations under controlled or semi-natural conditions and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Aquaculture is also a practice used for restoring and rehabilitating marine and freshwater ecosystems. Mariculture, commonly known as marine farming, is aquaculture in seawater habitats and lagoons, as opposed to freshwater aquaculture. Pisciculture is a type of aquaculture that consists of fish farming to obtain fish products as food.

Aquaculture can also be defined as the breeding, growing, and harvesting of fish and other aquatic plants, also known as farming in water. It is an environmental source of food and commercial products that help to improve healthier habitats and are used to reconstruct the population of endangered aquatic species. Technology has increased the growth of fish in coastal marine waters and open oceans due to the increased demand for seafood.

Offshore aquaculture, also known as open water aquaculture or open ocean aquaculture, is an emerging approach to mariculture (seawater aquafarming) where fish farms are positioned in deeper and less sheltered waters some distance away from the coast, where the cultivated fish stocks are exposed to more naturalistic living conditions with stronger ocean currents and more diverse nutrient flow. Existing "offshore" developments fall mainly into the category of exposed areas rather than fully offshore. As maritime classification society DNV GL has stated, development and knowledge-building are needed in several fields for the available deeper water opportunities to be realized.

One of the concerns with inshore aquaculture, which operate on more sheltered (and thus calmer) shallow waters, is that the discarded nutrients from unconsumed feeds and feces can accumulate on the farm's seafloor and damage the benthic ecosystem, and sometimes contribute to algal blooms. According to proponents of offshore aquaculture, the wastes from aquafarms that have been moved offshore tend to be swept away and diluted into the open ocean. Moving aquaculture offshore also provides more ecological space where production yields can expand to meet the increasing market demands for fish. Offshore facilities also avoid many of the conflicts with other marine resource users in the more crowded inshore waters, though there can still be user conflicts offshore.