Global potential of fishery–photovoltaic integration for sustainable energy and climate mitigation
Tom Goreau
Appears to consider only tidal flats and coastal ponds.
The potential for floating energy/mariculture is vastly larger!
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 14 May 2026
Global potential of fishery–photovoltaic integration for sustainable energy and climate mitigation
- Qiannan Ding,
- Chunpeng Chen,
- Ce Zhang,
- Wenxiang Ji,
- Huipeng Cao,
- Nan Xu,
- Yinxia Cao,
- Yifu Ou,
- Xuxi Lu &
- Bo Tian
Communications Earth & Environment (2026) Cite this article
- 1064 Accesses
- 8 Altmetric
We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Abstract
Fishery–photovoltaic integration combines solar photovoltaics with aquaculture ponds and tidal flats, offering a way to produce clean energy while maintaining aquatic food production. Yet its global potential remains poorly quantified. Here, we develop a five–kilometer spatial assessment to evaluate worldwide deployment potential across aquaculture ponds and tidal flats. After excluding areas constrained by environmental protection, biodiversity conservation, topography, and grid access, 43.6% of global pond and tidal–flat area remains suitable. Under a conservative 10% photovoltaic coverage scenario, this resource could support about 856 gigawatts of capacity, generate about 1,267 terawatt–hours of electricity per year, avoid about 580 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, and provide about 750 million US dollars in additional annual aquaculture revenue. These findings provide a global quantitative basis for fishery–photovoltaic integration and indicate that it could contribute to energy security, carbon mitigation, and ecosystem resilience.
Michael Hayes
Tom Goreau
Floating solar panel or other ocean energy arrays can have major carbon sequestration and climate benefits as well as economic fisheries benefits.
Fishes, especially juveniles, are attracted to, and swarm in, shaded environments under floating objects, attracting their predators in large numbers. This is the basis of Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs) and it is especially effective for fast moving pelagic predators like mahi-mahi (dolphin fish) and tunas. When a Micronesian fisherman finds a floating log he stays fishing right under it as long as his coconut supply allows him to sail back home. No point wasting time fishing anywhere else!
Floating coral reefs, powered by floating solar panel arrays, are possible over most of the tropical ocean, while at present only about 0.05% of the ocean floor is shallow enough for corals to grow in the light they need. They could transform fisheries in the vast EEZs of Small Island Developing States.
Observations made by diving under floating fish farms in both warm and cold waters reveal the fate of carbon. Almost all floating fish farms are commercial mono-species cultures that are heavily fed, often with non-stop conveyer belts, with commercial fish feed pellets. The vast majority of pellets fall to the bottom uneaten, and rot on the bottom. Commercial salmon farms are reported by divers to have up to 15 or 20 meter high piles of rotting food, mixed with fish excrement, on the bottom. The piles are black with iron sulphides, covered with a thin white layer of sulphide oxidizing bacteria, and are spreading anoxic conditions into the deep fjords favoured by salmon mariculture operations in Chile, Norway, Scotland, Nova Scotia, British Colombia, New Zealand, and other places. These anoxic conditions have created expanding dead zones that have killed large beds of shellfish that Indigenous People, such as the Huilliche of Chilean Patagonia, have lived on for thousands of years. Dead zones in Patagonia have killed the only shallow cold water coral reefs in the world!
Furthermore, extensive use of antibiotics and pesticides has fueled the evolution of antibiotic-resistant parasites and bacteria that are disseminated to surrounding waters and ecosystems. Many of the most widespread new coral diseases are caused by pathogens that originated in coastal fish and shrimp farms and are spreading throughout the ocean.
We propose an entirely different strategy to greatly increase economic productivity and carbon benefits, by not adding ANY food, fertilizer, antibiotics, or pesticides, and simply trickle-charging the entire ecosystem using Biorock Technology powered by small low voltage solar panels.
We add no food to Biorock reefs because the biodiversity rises so quickly by spontaneous recruitment of larval fish and invertebrates attracted to electrical fields, that it grows its own food for a complex and complete ecosystem without costly artificial additions, maximizing carbon recycling and minimizing loss from the ecosystem. Floating Biorock reefs grew corals, sponges, clams, tunicates, fishes, crabs, and a complex filter-feeding reef community that cleaned the water in a canal in Grand Bahama.
Coupled to solar panels, up-wellers, or down-wellers, Biorock technology allows intense productivity to be generated, and largely recirculated by pelagic productivity. However such systems could also be designed to export carbon directly to permanent deep anoxic zones beneath where carbon will be sequestered the longest.
Another key application is to neutralize ocean acidification by growing floating reefs of calcareous algae, which can produce up to 5 Kg of limestone per square metre per year. We grow them with Biorock at such astonishing rates that we grow back severely eroded beaches at record rates! Deep water coralline algae species can be grown to build up limestone sediment fans at the base of continental slopes to neutralize ocean acidification. I will soon post a talk on this innovative technology to be presented in June 2026 at the International Coralline Algae Symposium.
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Phone: (1) 857-523-0807 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
On the Nature of Things: The Scientific Photography of Fritz Goro
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
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“The Earth is not dying, she is being killed” U. Utah Phillips
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