Shellfish aquaculture management priorities in Florida, Maine and North Carolina

The rapid expansion of the marine shellfish aquaculture industry in coastal U.S. states is characterized by environmental, social, and economic benefits as well as management challenges. To meet this growth, managers need to better understand what objectives to prioritize when managing the sector. This project explores how residents living in Florida, Maine, and North Carolina—three states characterized by emerging and ambitious shellfish aquaculture sectors—view the development and management of the industry. This project asks 1) which shellfish aquaculture management objectives are most important to residents and 2) does prioritization of management objectives vary among demographic and other predictor variables. A large-scale survey (n=1011) was deployed to respondents in the three study states and survey data were entered into SPSS to perform statistical analyses. Results show that the most important management objectives for respondents across all demographics are supporting local/coastal community economic development, safeguarding the natural environment, and maintaining coastal culture and heritage. These top three objectives represent economic, environmental, and social dimensions of aquaculture development, suggesting that residents want aquaculture to fulfill multiple goals. The results suggest four conclusions: 1) residents want aquaculture management and development to serve multiple needs within their communities, 2) residents think that benefits of shellfish aquaculture production should primarily be distributed to producing communities, 3) some predictor variables are more important for managers to consider while others are less so, and 4) managers may use a survey approach to understand how to prioritize a range of objectives, setting them up to effectively manage shellfish aquaculture growth in their locality.