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Assessing the carbon footprint of marine bivalve aquaculture demands an accurate estimation of the CO 2 release associated to capital goods and aquaculture operations but also to the metabolic CO 2 budget of the cultured species. Nowadays, there are discrepancies on the processes to include in that budget, how to estimate them, and which scale should be applied, from individual to ecosystem. Site-specific environmental conditions and culture methods also affect significantly the estimates. Here, we have gathered environmental, biochemical and metabolic data from published scientific articles, reports and existing databases to present the metabolic CO 2 budget for mussel aquaculture in the coastal inlets of the Northwest Iberian upwelling. We analyse the contribution of mussel flesh and shell production jointly and separately. At the individual scale, the shell CO 2 budget is estimated from CO 2 removal by shell matrix protein synthesis and CO 2 release during calcification and respiration to support shell maintenance. Organic carbon in mussel flesh and CO 2 released by respiration to support flesh maintenance contribute to the flesh CO 2 budget. Only calcification and respiration processes are considered when estimating the metabolic carbon footprint of individual mussels because organic carbon in mussel flesh and shell returns to the atmosphere as CO 2 in a relatively short period. While the metabolic carbon footprint associated to mussel shell remains constant at 365 kg CO 2 per ton of shell, it varies from 92 to 578 kg CO 2 per ton of mussel flesh. This large variability depends on mussel seeding time and harvesting size, due to the differential seasonal growth patterns of flesh and shell. Inclusion of the CO 2 potentially immobilised in mussel faeces buried in the sediments would lead to a reduction of the metabolic carbon footprint estimates by up to 6 % compared with the individual estimates., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Forecasting of climate change impacts on marine aquaculture production has become a major research task, which requires taking into account the biases and uncertainties arising from ocean climate models in coastal areas, as well as considering culture management strategies. Focusing on the suspended mussel culture in the NW Iberian coastal upwelling system, we simulated current and future mussel growth by means of a multistructural net production Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model. We considered two scenarios and three ocean climate models to account for climate uncertainty, and applied a bias correction to the climate models in coastal areas. Our results show that the predicted impact of climate change on mussel growth is low compared with the role of the seeding time. However, the response of mussels varied across climate models, ranging from a minor growth decline to a moderate growth increase. Therefore, this work confirms that an accurate forecasting of climate change impacts on shellfish aquaculture should take into account the variability linked to both management strategies and climate uncertainty., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)