Animal Welfare Issues in Capture-Based Aquaculture
1
Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, Nord University, Universitetsalléen 11, 8026 Bodø, Norway
2
BioVivo Tech AS, Stobjørnen 17, 8029 Bodø, Norway
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Cosmas Nathanailides
Animals 2021, 11(4), 956; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11040956
Received: 22 February 2021
/
Revised: 23 March 2021
/
Accepted: 25 March 2021
/
Published: 30 March 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Issues in Aquaculture)
Simple Summary
Aquaculture is about farming aquatic animals in certain facilities, in order to meet the global demand for aquatic animal products. However, reproduction and raising of all commercially important aquatic animals under farming conditions are not always feasible or cost-effective. Thus, for some fish and shellfish species, a system that relies on the collection of wild individuals, at various life stages and rearing in controlled facilities, has been employed. These animals, however, are not products of a lengthy domestication process and thus are not used to the artificial environment of the fish farms. The way they respond to the various stressful conditions might be different, compared to the domesticated fish. Therefore, we have to make sure that we use the appropriate rearing methods, for the entire time, so that their impact on the fish welfare is minimized. Apart from the moral obligations, this will also increase the profitability of the activity.
Capture-based aquaculture (CBA) represents a type of intensive aquaculture production system for some economically valuable fish species, such as bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), eel (Anguilla spp.) and Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). In CBA, fish are captured from the wild in certain periods of the year, and following a recovery phase, they are kept in rearing facilities for a period of time, until they reach the market size. In this case, the fish are wild and have not gone through domestication like other fish species that are reproduced and farmed under the established farming systems. Therefore, these fish are not genetically adapted to live under the intensive farming conditions, and thus their welfare may be compromised in different manners compared to their domesticated counterparts. This review presents an overview of the current situation of CBA, while focusing on the assessment of fish welfare in CBA. The most commonly used fish welfare indicators will be discussed in relation to the different stages of CBA.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
fish; capture-based aquaculture; welfare; welfare indicators
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Chandararathna, U.; Iversen, M.H.; Korsnes, K.; Sørensen, M.; Vatsos, I.N. Animal Welfare Issues in Capture-Based Aquaculture. Animals 2021, 11, 956. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11040956
AMA Style
Chandararathna U, Iversen MH, Korsnes K, Sørensen M, Vatsos IN. Animal Welfare Issues in Capture-Based Aquaculture. Animals. 2021; 11(4):956. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11040956
Chicago/Turabian StyleChandararathna, Uthpala, Martin H. Iversen, Kjetil Korsnes, Mette Sørensen, and Ioannis N. Vatsos. 2021. "Animal Welfare Issues in Capture-Based Aquaculture" Animals 11, no. 4: 956. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11040956
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
