FSBI Students
Telemetry Methods for Estimating Activity and Metabolic Rate in Farmed Fish
Serena Wright
Centre for Environment and Fisheries & Swansea University
Supervisor(s): Julian Metcalfe and Rory Wilson
Increasing public demand for ethically sourced fish reared under appropriate conditions, along with recent developments in legislation for farmed animals have increased pressure on regulatory authorities to improve fish welfare. As a consequence, there has been increasing scientific focus in this field. However, there are problems with observing the behaviour and physiology of individual fish held in large homogeneous groups, such as those often used in aquaculture systems. Now, however, new telemetry methods using archival tags that incorporate tri-axial accelerometers promise to provide a repeatable and robust methodology that will enable quantification of fish behaviour and energetics.
Fine-scale behavioural patterns can be monitored with tri-axial accelerometers along with overall dynamic body acceleration, which has already been shown to relate linearly to oxygen consumption in a range of terrestrial species and one species of elasmobranch. In this project, accelerometers will be deployed on commercially important fish species, including European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax), Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) to assess the relationship between oxygen consumption (using a swim-tunnel respirometer) and dynamic acceleration. Subsequently, metabolic rate (estimated from acceleration data) from fish in aquaculture conditions will be recorded remotely under a variety of husbandry situations (variable stock densities, temperatures, feeding regimes, water qualities, and environmental heterogeneity) and as a function of their displayed behaviours (also monitored with the accelerometers). We anticipate that findings from this study will help to identify objective metrics of well-being for fish held in fish farms based on behavioural and energetic cues from accelerometers.
Contact:
Cefas Laboratory, Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk, NR33 0HTEmail: serena.wright@cefas.co.uk
PHOTO: Male Dicentrarchus labrax in the respirometer during acclimation
