Sustainable Aquaculture Systems
A fishing community in Malampaya Sound, Philippines.
Photo Credit: Keith Fabro for Mongabay
Mangroves provide many benefits and ecosystem services that improve local communities’ quality of life and support healthy fisheries. However, mangroves and other coastal ecosystems are threatened and degraded by environmental and anthropogenic pressures such as climate change and land development. One main driver of degradation is the conversion of mangroves into ponds for aquaculture, especially for shrimp and fish farming in East Asia and the Pacific Islands. Over time, mangroves in these regions have been deforested to create permanent brackish water ponds for fish farming, supporting community livelihoods. These trends of mangrove degradation and loss due to aquaculture are especially prevalent in island nations such as Indonesia, where aquaculture is a main source of food and income (Arifanti et al. 2025).
The combined pressures from aquaculture and timber exploitation, along with cycles of exploiting permits and development, periods of war and independence, and financial crises, influenced this trend in mangrove deforestation. Weak governance and global seafood demand led to increased conversion of mangroves into aquaculture ponds for international seafood export, creating a system where it is economically viable to deforest mangroves for unsustainable aquaculture systems (Ilman et al. 2016). As aquaculture can be integral to a community’s food security and economy, pond farmers view mangroves as a physical impediment to their aquaculture industry (Farnsworth and Ellison 1997).
With economic pressures to deforest mangroves for aquaculture, it is important to develop aquaculture systems and mangrove management plans that balance mangrove conservation and protection with the ability for local communities to generate income from aquaculture. To prevent further mangrove loss and degradation due to aquaculture pond construction, it is important to explore mangrove management methods that avoid deforestation and incorporate improvements to aquaculture and local fisheries. This article presents the following methods to develop sustainable aquaculture in mangrove ecosystems: mangrove restoration, integrated mangrove aquaculture (IMA), and silvofisheries.
Mangrove restoration
In a study conducted by Walton et al. (2006) to assess fishers’ attitudes towards restored mangroves in the Philippines, over 90% of surveyed fishers believed that mangroves should be protected for the benefits they provide and were willing to pay for their protection. Although fishers and local communities value mangrove ecosystem services, such as fish nursery habitat and storm protection, the short-term economic benefits from aquaculture often outweigh the long-term benefits from mangroves’ intrinsic or ecosystem-service-based value. Converting mangroves to high-intensity, fully deforested aquaculture ponds generates substantial income for local communities, creating an incentive to further degrade and deforest mangrove ecosystems for economic gains (Ilman et al. 2016).
Improvements to mangrove habitat quality through restoration and conservation are shown to have positive effects on local fisheries. Restored mangroves can bring economic benefits to local communities indirectly from ecosystem services, such as mangroves providing nursery habitat for fish, or directly from increased fishery catch (Walton et al. 2006; Das 2017). Sathiyamoorthy and Skurai (2024) demonstrate that local fish production is dependent on the condition of mangroves, and community participation in mangrove restoration can increase fish production and fishery revenue. Additionally, Das (2017) shows how restored mangroves can increase the catch of demersal, crustacean, and mollusk species in offshore commercial fisheries.
Integrated mangrove aquaculture (IMA)
One method of combining mangrove management with fishing-based livelihoods is IMA. In IMA systems, the integration of mangrove ecosystems and aquaculture is typically deliberately designed to achieve certain organic aquaculture, conservation, or carbon credit certifications. By protecting mangroves within an aquaculture site, IMA preserves the ecological benefits from the mangroves (McSherry et al. 2023). However, increasing the proportion of protected mangroves decreases the aquaculture yield per hectare, leading to slow adoption of IMA systems. Whereas aquaculture systems completely deforest a site to construct a pond, IMA systems deforest less than 50% of the total site for conversion into ponds, protecting remaining mangroves and allowing for mangrove restoration (Ahmed et al. 2017). In this, IMA conserves mangrove biodiversity, enhances the sustainability of aquaculture ponds, improves pond water quality, and can even help to sequester carbon (Mahmudi et al. 2022; Ahmed et al. 2017). Ahmed et al. (2017) describe how 1.5 million hectares of global mangroves have been lost from conversion to shrimp aquaculture since 1980, and this has led to an approximate loss of 831 million tons of sequestered blue carbon. To curb this loss, McSherry et al. (2023) recommend IMA and mangrove restoration for deforested areas, rather than deforesting currently intact mangrove ecosystems, and then implementing IMA.
Silvofisheries
Another combination of mangrove management and aquaculture is a silvofishery system, a system that typically includes an aquaculture pond and a spatially separated patch of high-density mangroves. Anggoro et al. (2025) determined that high-density mangroves surrounding aquaculture ponds and low-density mangroves within the ponds increase shrimp production, and they recommend a silvofishery system with plots that are approximately 80% mangroves and 20% pond to maximize economic and ecological benefits. As for the physical structure of silvofishery ponds, Mustafa et al. (2024) recommend the komplangan model, which has separated pond and mangrove areas, over the empang parit model, which has aquaculture ditches bordering a patch of mangroves.
While aquaculture is a consistent threat to mangrove ecosystems, the income and food supply from aquaculture are crucial for local communities, which necessitates applying sustainable systems that combine aquaculture and mangrove management. Converting traditional deforested aquaculture ponds into IMA or silvofishery systems can increase the quantity and quality of ecosystem services experienced by the local community (Van Oudenhoven et al. 2015). For these reasons, it is important for practitioners and decision makers to support and facilitate the development of IMA and silvofishery to support local livelihoods while maintaining mangrove health and the ecosystem services they provide.
For more information on the sustainable management of mangroves to mitigate deforestation and increase co-benefits, see the featured content focusing on Blue Carbon.