Mortality and fish welfare

Mortality has received insufficient attention as a fish welfare topic. Here, we aim to prompt fish farming stakeholders to discuss fish mortalities in relation to welfare. Mortality in farmed fish populations is due to a variety of biotic and abiotic causes, although it is often difficult to differentiate between underlying and immediate causes of mortality. Most mortality appears to occur during episodes associated with disease outbreaks and critical periods (in development or production). Most causes of mortality can be assumed to be associated with suffering prior to death. As mortality rates in farmed fish populations are suspected to rank amongst the highest in commonly farmed vertebrate species, mortality should be a principal fish welfare issue. Long-term mortality rates can be used as a retrospective welfare performance indicator and short-term mortality rates as an operational welfare indicator. Scrutiny of mortality records and determining causes of death will enable action to be taken to avoid further preventable mortality. The welfare performance of fish farms should only be judged on levels of predictable and preventable mortality. Fish farmers will already be monitoring mortality due to commercial and legal requirements. As profitability in fish farming is directly linked to survival, confronting mortality should ultimately benefit both fish and farmers.     

Dietary nitrogen and fish welfare

Little research has been done in optimizing the nitrogenous fraction of the fish diets in order to minimize welfare problems. The purpose of this review is to give an overview on how amino acid (AA) metabolism may be affected when fish are under stress and the possible effects on fish welfare when sub-optimal dietary nitrogen formulations are used to feed fish. In addition, it intends to evaluate the current possibilities, and future prospects, of using improved dietary nitrogen formulations to help fish coping with predictable stressful periods. Both metabolomic and genomic evidence show that stressful husbandry conditions affect AA metabolism in fish and may bring an increase in the requirement of indispensable AA. Supplementation in arginine and leucine, but also eventually in lysine, methionine, threonine and glutamine, may have an important role in enhancing the innate immune system. Tryptophan, as precursor for serotonin, modulates aggressive behaviour and feed intake in fish. Bioactive peptides may bring important advances in immunocompetence, disease control and other aspects of welfare of cultured fish. Fishmeal replacement may reduce immune competence, and the full nutritional potential of plant-protein ingredients is attained only after the removal or inactivation of some antinutritional factors. This review shows that AA metabolism is affected when fish are under stress, and this together with sub-optimal dietary nitrogen formulations may affect fish welfare. Furthermore, improved dietary nitrogen formulations may help fish coping with predictable stressful events.     

Demand feeding and welfare in farmed fish

Following the development of demand-feeding systems, many experiments have been conducted to explore feeding motivation and feed intake in farmed fish. This work aims to review a selection of studies in the field, focusing on three key factors, related to demand feeding and fish welfare. Firstly, we outline how demand feeders should be considered when developing feed management strategies for improving welfare in production conditions. Secondly, via laboratory demand-feeding experiments, we show self-feeding activities depend not only on feeding motivation and social organisation, but also on individual learning capacity and risk-taking behaviour. Thirdly, we report encouraging results demonstrating that when presented with two or more self-feeders containing complementary foods, fish select a diet according to their specific nutritional requirements, suggesting that demand feeders could be used to improve welfare by allowing fish to meet their nutritional needs.     

Health of farmed fish: its relation to fish welfare and its utility as welfare indicator

This brief review focuses on health and biological function as cornerstones of fish welfare. From the function-based point of view, good welfare is reflected in the ability of the animal to cope with infectious and non-infectious stressors, thereby maintaining homeostasis and good health, whereas stressful husbandry conditions and protracted suffering will lead to the loss of the coping ability and, thus, to impaired health. In the first part of the review, the physiological processes through which stressful husbandry conditions modulate health of farmed fish are examined. If fish are subjected to unfavourable husbandry conditions, the resulting disruption of internal homeostasis necessitates energy-demanding physiological adjustments (allostasis/acclimation). The ensuing energy drain leads to trade-offs with other energy-demanding processes such as the functioning of the primary epithelial barriers (gut, skin, gills) and the immune system. Understanding of the relation between husbandry conditions, allostatic responses and fish health provides the basis for the second theme developed in this review, the potential use of biological function and health parameters as operational welfare indicators (OWIs). Advantages of function- and health-related parameters are that they are relatively straightforward to recognize and to measure and are routinely monitored in most aquaculture units, thereby providing feasible tools to assess fish welfare under practical farming conditions. As the efforts to improve fish welfare and environmental sustainability lead to increasingly diverse solutions, in particular integrated production, it is imperative that we have objective OWIs to compare with other production forms, such as high-density aquaculture. However, to receive the necessary acceptance for legislation, more robust scientific backing of the health- and function-related OWIs is urgently needed.     

Behavioural indicators of welfare in farmed fish

Behaviour represents a reaction to the environment as fish perceive it and is therefore a key element of fish welfare. This review summarises the main findings on how behavioural changes have been used to assess welfare in farmed fish, using both functional and feeling-based approaches. Changes in foraging behaviour, ventilatory activity, aggression, individual and group swimming behaviour, stereotypic and abnormal behaviour have been linked with acute and chronic stressors in aquaculture and can therefore be regarded as likely indicators of poor welfare. On the contrary, measurements of exploratory behaviour, feed anticipatory activity and reward-related operant behaviour are beginning to be considered as indicators of positive emotions and welfare in fish. Despite the lack of scientific agreement about the existence of sentience in fish, the possibility that they are capable of both positive and negative emotions may contribute to the development of new strategies (e.g. environmental enrichment) to promote good welfare. Numerous studies that use behavioural indicators of welfare show that behavioural changes can be interpreted as either good or poor welfare depending on the fish species. It is therefore essential to understand the species-specific biology before drawing any conclusions in relation to welfare. In addition, different individuals within the same species may exhibit divergent coping strategies towards stressors, and what is tolerated by some individuals may be detrimental to others. Therefore, the assessment of welfare in a few individuals may not represent the average welfare of a group and vice versa. This underlines the need to develop on-farm, operational behavioural welfare indicators that can be easily used to assess not only the individual welfare but also the welfare of the whole group (e.g. spatial distribution). With the ongoing development of video technology and image processing, the on-farm surveillance of behaviour may in the near future represent a low-cost, noninvasive tool to assess the welfare of farmed fish.     

Molecular biology and fish welfare: A winning combination

The issue of animal welfare in aquaculture is of growing interest and there is an increasing consumer demand for documentation of safe and ethically defendable food production. In this context, we have looked for molecular markers among those genes whose expression is modified by the different farming conditions. We have compared gene expression of sea bass farmed at different population densities by differential display, and we have obtained six bands differentially expressed whose sequences have been deposited in the public databases; two of them were suppressed by high population density, while four were induced by the treatment. These genes can be used as biomarkers, and together with a panel of stress-related genes of sea bass (D. labrax) that we have already obtained, could allow the rapid diagnosis of the welfare status of a fish using RT-PCR. We are certain that the new molecular techniques will find their place in the everyday management of fish farming. On the other hand, we are also aware that the scarcity of genomic resources for some fish species, in spite of their economical interest, will retard the beneficial effects that modern biotechnology could bring to aquaculture industry. Therefore, an effort should be made to reduce, as far genomic resources are concerned, the gap that separates farmed species from model organisms such as Danio rerio and Fugu rubripes.     

Farmed fish welfare: stress,post-mortem muscle metabolism,and stress-related meat quality changes

Over the past few decades, a considerable scientific progress has been achieved in the area of fish welfare at all stages—farming, transportation, various pre-slaughter manipulations, stunning/killing procedures, etc. The increasing scientific interest is mainly due to the serious need of developing and implementing specific fish welfare requirements across the whole chain for both ethical (welfare) and commercial (meat quality) reasons. Since there has been substantial evidence that fish are able to experience pain and suffering, the provoked stress response could be a major cause of altered post-mortem metabolism and impaired meat quality. The present review was aimed to present the relationship between ante-mortem stress, course of post-mortem metabolic processes and the potential alterations in some quality traits of fish for human consumption.     

Safeguarding the welfare of farmed fish at harvest

Fish welfare at harvest is easily compromised by poor choice of handling and slaughter methods, lack of attention to detail and by unnecessary adherence to fish farming traditions. The harvest process comprises fasting the fish to empty the gut, crowding the fish, gathering and moving the fish using brails, fish pumps, and sometimes also road or boat transport and finally stunning and killing the fish. The harvesting processes commonly used for bass, bream, carp, catfish, cod, eel, halibut, pangasius, salmon, tilapia, trout, tuna and turbot are outlined. These harvesting processes are discussed; the consequences for fish welfare identified and practical tests which can be made at the harvest site highlighted. Welfare at harvest for the majority of farmed fish species can be improved by adopting and adapting existing procedures already known to be beneficial for fish welfare through their use in other fish farming systems or with other species. It is seldom necessary to develop completely new concepts or methods.     

Anaesthesia of farmed fish: implications for welfare

During their life cycle as farmed animals, there are several situations in which fish are subjected to handling and confinement. Netting, weighing, sorting, vaccination, transport and, at the end, slaughter are frequent events under farming conditions. As research subjects, fish may also undergo surgical procedures that range from tagging, sampling and small incisions to invasive procedures. In these situations, treatment with anaesthetic agents may be necessary in order to ensure the welfare of the fish. The main objective of this paper is to review our knowledge of the effects of anaesthetic agents in farmed fish and their possible implications for welfare. As wide variations in response to anaesthesia have been observed both between and within species, special attention has been paid to the importance of secondary factors such as body weight, water temperature and acute stress. In this review, we have limited ourselves to the anaesthetic agents such as benzocaine, metacaine (MS-222), metomidate hydrochloride, isoeugenol, 2-phenoxyethanol and quinaldine. Anaesthetic protocols of fish usually refer to one single agent, whereas protocols of human and veterinary medicine cover combinations of several drugs, each contributing to the effects needed in the anaesthesia. As stress prior to anaesthesia may result in abnormal reactions, pre-anaesthetic sedation is regularly used in order to reduce or avoid stress and is an integral part of the veterinary protocols of higher vertebrates. Furthermore, the anaesthetic agents that are used in order to obtain general anaesthesia are combined with analgesic agents that target nociception. The increased use of such combinations in fish is therefore included as a special section. Anaesthetic agents are widely used to avoid stress during various farming procedures. While several studies report that anaesthetics are effective in reducing the stress associated with confinement and handling, there are indications that anaesthesia may in itself induce a stress response, measured by elevated levels of cortisol. MS-222 has been reported to elicit high cortisol release rates immediately following exposure, while benzocaine causes a bimodal response. Metomidate has an inhibitory effect on cortisol in fish and seems to induce the lowest release of cortisol of the agents reported in the literature. Compared to what is observed following severe stressors such as handling and confinement, the amount of cortisol released in response to anaesthesia appears to be low but may represent an extra load under otherwise stressful circumstances. Furthermore, anaesthetics may cause secondary adverse reactions such as acidosis and osmotic stress due to respiratory arrest and insufficient exchange of gas and ions between the blood and the water. All in all, anaesthetics may reduce stress and thereby improve welfare but can also have unwanted side effects that reduce the welfare of the fish and should therefore always be used with caution. Finally, on the basis of the data reported in the literature and our own experience, we recommend that anaesthetic protocols should always be tested on a few fish under prevailing conditions in order to ensure an adequate depth of anaesthesia. This recommendation applies whether a single agent or a combination of agents is used, although it appears that protocols comprising combinations of agents provide wider safety margins. The analgesic effects of currently used agents, in spite of their proven local effects, are currently being debated as the agents are administrated to fish via inhalation rather than locally at the target site. We therefore recommend that all protocols of procedures requiring general anaesthesia should be complemented by administration of agents with analgesic effect at the site of tissue trauma.     

Effects of income and population growth on fish price and welfare

An excess supply-demand model is used to determine the effects of income and population growth on the international price of fish and on welfare in net-exporting and importing regions. Stochastic simulations of the model suggest that fish price increases by between 0.25 and 1.07% for each 1% increase in world income, and by between 0.30 and 1.20% for each 1% increase in world population. Combining these elasticity estimates with the actual growth in income and population for 1999–2013, results suggest that income and population growth together caused the world price of fish to rise by between 1.0 and 4.1% per year, for a best-bet estimate of 2.1% per year. According to a trend regression the actual rise in fish price over the same approximate period averaged 1.0% per year. This suggests supply growth due to aquaculture cut the increase in price due to demand shifts by about one half. Higher fish prices increase welfare in net-exporting countries at the expense of welfare in net-importing countries. However, our results suggest that net gains to producers and consumers in the two regions combined are positive.     

养殖鱼类的动物福利与产品品质

以动物福利和人类福利的关联性为出发点,探讨我国水产养殖产业的潜在升级驱动力,目标是探索从终端品质倒推我国水产养殖产业从量到质升级的切实可行性。本文以养殖鱼类为焦点,从动物福利视角探索我国水产品形象与品质的提升空间,从以下几个方面进行了系统回顾。第一,基于对陆生脊椎动物福利的五项自由原则和三大范畴的系统回顾,对比动物福利在家畜家禽业的研究发展历程,对鱼类福利的发展历程与现状进行了脉络梳理;第二,针对鱼类福利的量化评估问题,从生理应激、行为应激以及心理应激三大应激响应机制,对与鱼类福利评价体系相关的研究进展进行了回顾,重点针对评价指标及评价方法进行了归纳总结;第三,针对养殖鱼类产业,重点对养殖过程、离水捕捞以及致死处置三个主要环节的鱼类福利特点及研究利用现状进行了分析讨论。最后,分析指出我国渔后动物福利存在盲区,提出了品质易逝期动物福利方案的思路。提出基于品质易逝期动物福利原则以实现锁鲜调控的展望：①为最大限度保持原料天然属性,突破“活而不鲜”的困局;②为改变初级水产品销售现状,减少渔后损失实行渔后的产业化;③为降低水产品供应链碳排放;④为实现水产动物福利等,提供一揽子解决方案的研究与实践范式。总之,科学解读渔后动物福利对于终端品质升级提供具有靶向性指导,同时通过优质产品形象为我国渔业产业赋予人文内涵。     

Injuries and deformities in fish: their potential impacts upon aquacultural production and welfare

Fish can be the recipients of numerous injuries that are potentially deleterious to aquacultural production performance and welfare. This review will employ a systematic approach that classifies injuries in relation to specific anatomical areas of the fish and will evaluate the effects of injury upon production and welfare. The selected areas include the (1) mouth, (2) eye, (3) epidermis and (4) fins. These areas cover a large number of external anatomical features that can be injured during aquacultural procedures and husbandry practices. In particular, these injuries can be diagnosed on live fish, in a farm environment. For each anatomical feature, this review addresses (a) its structure and function and (b) defines key injuries that can affect the fish from a production and a welfare perspective. Particular attention is then given to (c) defining known and potential aquacultural risk factors before (d) identifying and outlining potential short- and long-term farming practices and mitigation strategies to reduce the incidence and prevalence of these injuries. The review then concludes with an analysis of potential synergies between risk factors the type of injury, in addition to identifying potential synergies in mitigation strategies. The paper covers both aquaculture and capture-based aquaculture.     

Estimating uncertainty in fish stock assessment and forecasting

A variety of tools are available to quantify uncertainty in age‐structured fish stock assessments and in management forecasts. These tools are based on particular choices for the underlying population dynamics model, the aspects of the assessment considered uncertain, and the approach for assessing uncertainty (Bayes, frequentist or likelihood). The current state of the art is advancing rapidly as a consequence of the availability of increased computational power, but there remains little consistency in the choices made for assessments and forecasts. This can be explained by several factors including the specifics of the species under consideration, the purpose for which the analysis is conducted and the institutional framework within which the methods are developed and used, including the availability and customary usage of software tools. Little testing of either the methods or their assumptions has yet been done. Thus, it is not possible to argue either that the methods perform well or perform poorly or that any particular conditioning choices are more appropriate in general terms than others. Despite much recent progress, fisheries science has yet to identify a means for identifying appropriate conditioning choices such that the probability distributions which are calculated for management purposes do adequately represent the probabilities of eventual real outcomes. Therefore, we conclude that increased focus should be placed on testing and carefully examining the choices made when conducting these analyses, and that more attention must be given to examining the sensitivity to alternative assumptions and model structures. Provision of advice concerning uncertainty in stock assessments should include consideration of such sensitivities, and should use model‐averaging methods, decision tables or management procedure simulations in cases where advice is strongly sensitive to model assumptions.     

Nucleotide nutrition in fish: Current knowledge and future applications

The roles of nucleotides and metabolites in fish diets have been sparingly studied for over 25 years. Beside possible involvement in diet palatability, fish feeding behavior and biosynthesis of non-essential amino acids, exogenous nucleotides have shown promise most recently as dietary supplements to enhance immunity and disease resistance of fish produced in aquaculture. Research on dietary nucleotides in fishes has shown they may improve growth in early stages of development, enhance larval quality via broodstock fortification, alter intestinal structure, increase stress tolerance as well as modulate innate and adaptive immune responses. Fishes fed nucleotide-supplemented diets generally have shown enhanced resistance to viral, bacterial and parasitic infection. Despite occasional inconsistency in physiological responses, dietary supplementation of nucleotides has shown rather consistent beneficial influences on various fish species. Although nucleotide nutrition research in fishes is in its infancy and many fundamental questions remain unanswered, observations thus far support the contention that nucleotides are conditionally or semi-essential nutrients for fishes, and further exploration of dietary supplementation of nucleotides for application in fish culture is warranted. Hypothesized reason(s) associated with these beneficial effects include dietary provision of physiologically required levels of nucleotides due to limited synthetic capacity of certain tissues (e.g. lymphoid), inadequate energetic expenditure for de novo synthesis, immunoendocrine interactions and modulation of gene expression patterns. However, currently there are numerous gaps in existing knowledge about exogenous nucleotide application to fish including various aspects of digestion, absorption, metabolism, and influences on various physiological responses especially expression of immunogenes and modulation of immunoglobulin production. Additional information is also needed in regard to age/size-related responses and appropriate doses and timing of administration. Thus further research in these areas should be pursued.     

Possible applications of modern fish larviculture technology to ornamental fish production

There has been rapid development in the marine foodfishlarviculture technology in Europe since the early eighties,especially in the flat fish, turbot and halibut, and the bass andbream species. The most significant improvements in the eightieswere the introduction of light control, artificial reproductiontechniques, appropriate water treatment and the use of rotifersand Artemia nauplii of specific sizes and in the late eightiesand early nineties the quality enhancement of live food organismsusing specific enrichment techniques. Present research is focusedon the implementation of several microbial techniques to improvethe hygiene of live prey and fish.Many of the modern larviculture techniques being used in marine foodfish could be adapted for application in the ornamental fish industry. For examples, research in the Onamental Fish Section, Primary Production Department, Singapore has demonstrated that the use of freshwater rotifers and Artemia nauplii would enable artificial rearing of Discus in the absence of the parent fish and improve the larval performance of Gouramis and Tetra larvae. The use of such small live food organisms is likely to facilitate breeding of new fish species with small larvae. Research has also indicated that the use of diets containing vitamin C and certain immuno-stimulants improved the stress resistance of guppy. Such techniques would have important application in the fish transport, an important aspect in the ornamental fish industry     

海上风电场对鱼类福利的影响研究进展

为减少电力行业碳排放,实现碳中和目标,风电作为重要的清洁能源之一,受到世界范围的高度重视。随着陆上风电不断开发利用,导致陆地风电场空间资源日益紧缺,人类开始将风电产业转向更为广阔的海洋。由于我国海岸线绵长且邻近电力负荷区域,近年来,海上风电场建设取得了飞速发展,海上风电将成为我国未来发展可再生能源主要方向之一。海上风电工程在建设和运用期间会产生噪音和电磁场污染,可能对海洋生物会带来一定的负面影响,对其开展研究和评估是确保风电场可持续发展的前提。本文总结了国内外海上风电工程对海洋鱼类影响的研究进展,结合我国实际需求,提出研究建议,为未来我国开展海上风电项目对生物影响的评估提供参考。     

养殖密度对鱼类福利影响的研究进展I．死亡率、生长、摄食以及应激反应

养殖密度影响鱼类福利是鱼类生理生态学、福利学和种群生态学研究中的关键问题,已受到各国学者的关注。文章综述了养殖密度影响鱼类福利的主要研究进展,讨论了鱼类死亡率、生长、摄食以及应激反应等福利指标随养殖密度变化的规律及其描述方法；在此基础上,对鱼类福利指标随不同放养密度变化规律的研究以及应用前景进行了展望。     

Geostatistics in fisheries survey design and stock assessment: models, variances and applications

Over the past 10 years, fisheries scientists gradually adopted geostatistical tools when analysing fish stock survey data for estimating population abundance. First, the relation between model‐based variance estimates and covariance structure enabled estimation of survey precision for non‐random survey designs. The possibility of using spatial covariance for optimising sampling strategy has been a second motive for using geostatistics. Kriging also offers the advantage of weighting data values, which is useful when sample points are clustered. This paper discusses, with fisheries applications, the different geostatistical models that characterise spatial variation, and their variance formulae for many different survey designs. Some anticipated developments of geostatistics related to multivariate structures, temporal variability and adaptive sampling are discussed.     

Hydroacoustic assessment of the fish stock in Theodorushaven, a small Dutch harbour

Assessment of the fish stock in the Theodorushaven was conducted with a dual-beam hydroacoustic system. Species composition determined by a seine and trawl fishery showed large concentrations of fish in the harbour during winter. The hydroacoustic survey showed that the distribution of fish in the harbour area was stratified with fish near the bottom. The overall density in the harbour area was 0.67 fish m^–3. The density in the associated channel area was estimated at 0.1 fish m^–3. The coefficient of variation for the estimated total fish abundance was >25%.Fish >25 cm were not caught in the Theodorushaven fishery, although analysis of the sonar data indicated their presence. Fishery data from the adjacent Volkerak-Zoommeer showed that bream was the dominant species. Therefore, the biomass estimate of the stock >25 cm in the Theodorushaven was based on the standard length–weight relationship of bream. This resulted in maximum biomass estimates of 5800 kg ha^–1 for the harbour area and 1100 kg ha^–1 in the channel area. The minimum biomass estimate, based on the assumption that the more slender zander was the dominant species >25 cm, gave values of 4100 kg ha^–1 in the harbour area and 780 kg ha^–1 in the channel area.     

Concurrent assessment of fish and habitat in warmwater streams in Wyoming

Abstract  Fisheries research and management in North America have focused largely on sport fishes, but native non-game fishes have attracted increased attention due to their declines. The Warmwater Stream Assessment (WSA) was developed to evaluate simultaneously both fish and habitat in Wyoming streams by a process that includes three major components: (1) stream-reach selection and accumulation of existing information, (2) fish and habitat sampling and (3) summarisation and evaluation of fish and habitat information. Fish are sampled by electric fishing or seining and habitat is measured at reach and channel-unit (i.e. pool, run, riffle, side channel, or backwater) scales. Fish and habitat data are subsequently summarised using a data-matrix approach. Hierarchical decision trees are used to assess critical habitat requirements for each fish species expected or found in the reach. Combined measurements of available habitat and the ecology of individual species contribute to the evaluation of the observed fish assemblage. The WSA incorporates knowledge of the fish assemblage and habitat features to enable inferences of factors likely influencing both the fish assemblage and their habitat. The WSA was developed for warmwater streams in Wyoming, but its philosophy, process and conceptual basis may be applied to environmental assessments in other geographical areas.