OPINION

Applied aquaculture science needs “quality time” and less bureaucracy

By Alejandro Guelfo, 15 January 2026 | The sector needs to accelerate innovation, but bureaucracy and competition for funding are holding research back: the key is to ensure every euro pays for more science and less paperwork

Investigadora con dolor de cabeza

Aquaculture science is developing under growing pressure. The sector is increasingly seen as key solution for supplying high-quality protein with a lower environmental footprint, but the research required to sustain that growth must keep pace with urgent challenges such as emerging diseases, volatile raw material costs, tighter regulation, rising sustainability expectations and intensifying global competition.

Unlike many disciplines, aquaculture cannot be fast-tracked without consequences. Progress depends on biological cycles and lengthy validation: feeding trials take months at laboratory scale and years at commercial scale, genetics takes years as well, health and welfare strategies requires testing under real-world conditions, and modern systems such as RAS demand constant control of complex variables. Time is part of the method.

Yet that “quality time” is shrinking. Increasingly, effort is absorbed by competition for funding, consortium coordination and administrative burdens, leaving less room for experiments, data and real solutions – just when the sector needs them most.

That pressure is amplified by the way research is funded. Competitive calls with limited budgets attract dozens – sometimes hundreds – of proposals, requiring weeks of coordination, consortium building and impact-driven paperwork before any science even begins. With low success rates, much of that effort never reaches the laboratory.

Even when funding is secured, the administrative load often intensifies. Time is consumed by expenditure justification, reporting and rigid procedures that clash with the realities of working with living organisms, where delays, mortalities and experimental adjustments are unavoidable.

This dynamic also shapes what gets researched. When competition is costly, teams gravitate towards “safe” projects with predictable outcomes, leaving less room for high-risk research that could deliver real breakthroughs in feed, health, welfare or efficiency. Short, fragmented funding cycles further restrict continuity and deep validation, while better-resourced organisation gain an advantage simply by having greater administrative capacity.

As a recent article published in Nature warned, competitive funding can even reach a “point of no return”, when the cost of applying for and administering grants rivals – or exceeds – the value of the funding awarded. The sector may continue to generate knowledge, but at an increasing cost in time, focus and long-term impact.

The answer is not only more money, but greater efficiency: funding models that prioritise experiments and results over paperwork, with more targeted calls, staged processes and proportionate reporting requirements. Aquaculture’s future depends on turning research into practical solutions, and that requires every euro to buy more science and less bureaucracy.