Aquaculture in Malaysia: Water-related environmental challenges and opportunities for cleaner production

Fisheries, one of the growing sectors in Malaysia, contribute a notable percentage to the national gross domestic product. The fisheries sector rapidly and dynamically grew throughout the past three decades. Aquaculture commodities are currently providing remarkable contributions to the fisheries sector, overcoming the previous dominance of traditional marine capture commodities. The fisheries sector is facing environmental issues, especially considering water-related pollution, despite its contribution to the economic sector. Aquaculture effluents contain high organic materials, nutrients, proteins, and even contaminants of emerging concern. Several studies have already been conducted to treat the generated wastewater. However, investigations on environmentally friendly technology, which might lead to resource recovery from aquaculture effluent, are still limited and scarce. This review paper comprises the development of aquaculture in Malaysia, its potential of generating abundant amounts of wastewater, and its characteristics. This paper summarizes the best practice of aquaculture effluent treatment and also highlights the green technology, which can be utilized to overcome the issue of currently utilized physico-chemical treatment. In addition, this paper emphasizes the considerable potential of valuable material recovery from the aquaculture effluent using a combination of bio-coagulant/bio-flocculant utilization and constructed wetland to achieve cleaner production for the aquaculture sector.