Selection of suitable coastal aquaculture sites using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in Menai Strait, UK

The coastal areas are subject to increasing exploitation and diverse functions. The widely conducted aquaculture activities intensify the stress at the coastal areas and bring new challenges to aquaculture and sustainable coastal management. The suitable site selection is an optimistic way to minimizing stress on ecosystem, enhancing productive harvests, and mitigating conflicts between different water users. This study aims to demonstrate a local-oriented approach for selecting suitable locations for mussel cultivation in the Menai Strait by conducting Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), which takes environmental and socio-economic factors into consideration. A high resolution hydrodynamic model was built to overcome data scarcity by providing data sets. Interviews and a questionnaire survey were organized to engage local stakeholders into decision-making process. The result suggested two separated areas that suitable for mussel cultivation, which covers 20.5% of the whole region (8.8 km(2)). The environmentally productive area differed significantly from socio-economically suitable area, which indicated that both categories of evaluation criteria need to be concurrently considered to achieve high production as well as prevent conflicts among stakeholders. This selection method provides a way to overcome data scarcity and engage local stakeholders, and its implementation has the potential to contribute to the sustainable coastal development by reducing potential conflicts among users at the planning stage.