Extended Bibliometric Review of Technical Challenges in Mariculture Production and Research Hotspot Analysis

The growth in population and the higher need for aquatic products make the aquaculture industry the world’s fastest-growing food industry. With its rapid development, production is facing various challenges to achieve sustainability and cost-effectiveness. Some obstacles in production are related to the design of mariculture cages, automatization, location of the farm, biofouling, feeding, waste management, and others. This paper deals with the extended bibliometric analysis of technical problems in mariculture based on keywords, citations, journals, and other factors by means of scientometric software, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer. Important keywords related to aquaculture and mariculture were obtained from the Web of Science platform and further analyzed by means of the mentioned scientometric software offering knowledge domain visualization and construction of knowledge maps. Apart from the identification of research topics of the highest importance, research hotspots are characterized as follows: technical, biological, digital, and environmental. The most cited articles are related to the environmental problems and solutions in marine aquaculture and the study of biofouling and how to control it. Other important documents with high citation rates are related to the cages, offshore mariculture, location conditions, and sustainability. This study recognizes trends by combining aquaculture production with floating structures for energy extraction of sea resources; thus, making aquaculture more interdisciplinary than before.