Ecopreneurship in aquaculture - the adoption of organic fishfarming methods

The gap between limited wild fish resources and the increasing demand for seafood grows from year to year. Modernising the aquacultural sector seems to be the only possibility to close the gap between decreasing wild catch and increasing demand for seafood. An intensification of aquacultural production methods are often connected with environmental problems; one solution can be seen in the adoption of organic productions techniques. However, so far fishfarmers' willingness to convert their farms to organic is low. By using a sociological approach with in-depth interviews and qualitative content analysis, the aim of the presentation is the analysis of underlying reasons why only a few fishfarmers have converted their farms to organic aquaculture. The main hindering factors for a conversion of fishfarms were fears of conventional fishfarmers that they would be excluded from their local fishery community and strong prejudices against organic production methods. Interestingly, there were no fears that organic fish would not find a market or would not receive a suffient price premium.