TWO NEW PROJECTS ON SALMON WELFARE

Two new projects on salmon welfare. Two new FHF-funded projects are now starting up to develop new methods that can provide answers to how farmed salmon are actually doing.

It is in the nature of fish that they should not show signs of weakness and illness. Anyone who shows signs of weakness quickly becomes prey and is eaten by other fish or predators. In farming, it is important to know whether a salmon population has a reduced state of health so that you do not expose the fish to stressful conditions such as de-lice before they have recovered. The aim of the two new projects is to develop tools so that breeders can measure the health of the fish, and preferably without having to kill the fish. These are what we call welfare indicators, and there is a strong desire in the industry to produce better tools in this field.

Blood tests

When we humans do not feel quite well, we have a chat with the doctor who can do various measurements on us to find out what is wrong. It is not so easy to communicate with the fish, so such analyses become even more important to be able to say something about how the fish are really doing. Blood tests are widely used on humans and animals, but little used on fish due to a lack of reference values ​​and parameters adapted to fish. Better blood analyses for fish is therefore the aim of the project “Blood chemistry as decision support in aquaculture (INDIKATOR)”. This project is led by NMBU and more information can be found here .

Non-lethal welfare indicators

The second project is led by Møreforskning with the title “Non-lethal diagnostic indicators for better decision support in the farming industry”. Today, histology is normally used to say something about the state of e.g. the fish’s heart or gills, and such analyses require that the fish must be killed. The aim of this project is therefore to develop new diagnostic tools to say something about how the fish is doing without having to kill it, i.e. non-lethal . One must, among other things, look for markers in mucus, i.e. swab samples of the fish’s mucus on the skin and gills. Ultrasound of internal organs combined with artificial intelligence (AI) as well as camera monitoring of behaviour are other possibilities that will be looked at. The future goal is of course to get quick, simple analyses that can be carried out at the edge of the cage.

Better tools for measuring fish welfare have long been high on the agenda at FHF, and there are many previous and ongoing projects in this field. Among other things, in the BIORELEVANS project, work is being done to develop automated welfare registrations from salmon in aquaculture. Here you can see i.a. on whether the fish’s breathing rate can reveal the fish’s stress level.

“I am optimistic that the researchers will come up with new and better tools to be able to say something objective about the fish’s state of health. The goal is of course not just to measure fish welfare, but to improve it, and then measurements and knowledge are an important step on the way,” says Renate Johansen, Head of Department at FHF.

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