In order to promote a reduction of waste in agriculture and aquaculture, these are recycled in the SIDESTREAM project as residual materials in the sense of a circular economy. To this end, it is to be examined which organisms are suitable for using residual flows from agriculture and aquaculture and thereby valuable components for other branches of industry e.g., fish feeds.

 Many aquatic organisms with a low trophic level are able to convert inferior feedstuffs into high-quality substances such as highly unsaturated essential fatty acids ("fish oils"), proteins and pigments. Research is being carried out at five European research locations to find out how these skills can be used technically and ecologically in European aquaculture. At the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, marine amphipods, which are able to synthesize valuable through trophic upgrading, are bred on green waste from agriculture.
The raw materials created in the project are then validated in close collaboration between the partners involved in feed trials at the AWI on various types of fish (sea bass and trout) and shrimp. With this approach, high-quality biomass in the form of tiny marine animals and bacteria is generated from residual currents and made available as animal feed. This enables sustainable and innovative use of resources along the value chain in and from aquaculture, which supports a competitive blue bioeconomy in Europe.