Mariculture in Croatia: A Spatial Perspective

Croatia has a highly indented coastline, favourable ecological conditions, proximity to the markets, and potential for further mariculture development. This research aims to determine the status of Croatian mariculture considering: distribution of fish and bivalve farms, total mariculture area, buffer zone, Internal Waters Utilization, nominal intensity, number of registered operators, and employees in the industry. The spatial database was created using manual vectorization from recent (2022/2024) Google Earth satellite imagery. The results show that marine farms in Croatia occupy 0.056% of the area of internal marine waters. Out of this, 53 % of the surface is dedicated to bivalve and 47% to fish farming. Croatia’s total nominal intensity is 3.3 t/km of coastline in 2022. Farms are located in all coastal counties, with the largest occupied area in Zadar County (38.1%) and Dubrovnik-Neretva County (37.5%). Most of the national fish farming area is located in Zadar County (71%), while the largest area of bivalve farming (68%) is found in Dubrovnik-Neretva County. In Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, despite having the largest area of internal marine waters, only 4.3% of the total mariculture area is present. The analysis indicates that mariculture currently occurs in a tiny portion of internal marine waters and has generally lower nominal intensity than other Mediterranean countries. Although mariculture is present in all coastal counties, the distribution and productivity of farms is uneven. For future development, we suggest focusing on optimizing current production capacities and exploring innovative aquaculture practices to enhance sustainability and economic viability.