Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are a commercially important species across the globe and specifically in Atlantic Canada. There has been rapid expansion in production rates over the last few decades to meet an increasing demand for healthy, sustainable protein. The welfare of these animals has been of increasing interest to consumers, producers and regulating bodies. As the industry continues to expand, the welfare of fish in aquaculture must be prioritized to ensure the viability of scalable operations. It is imperative to define a welfare standard using a variety of indicators that can be implemented as standard operating procedures.
Advancements in technology have allowed for the increased ability to monitor animals in situ. Acoustic fish tags and bio-loggers can be used to monitor a variety of parameters including heartrate, temperature, acceleration, and depth of fish as they experience regular aquaculture practices and adverse water quality conditions. Environmental sensors that monitor dissolved oxygen, temperature and depth can be used to capture fine-scale changes in water quality within individual pens on a farm. The combination of these sensors and a consistent log of daily farm activities can be used to identify when stressful conditions on a farm persist, and the bio-loggers can measure the response of fish to these conditions. Seventeen Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) were each tagged with two tags measuring heart rate, acceleration, temperature, and depth. Five sensors monitoring temperature and oxygen on a profile line were also deployed in the pen. Data collection is ongoing, but some data is available in real-time and has been analyzed to date. The full dataset of both environmental and fish tag data will be available when the fish are harvested in June 2022.
This study aims to correlate and grade the severity of the physiological and behavioral response to stressful water quality conditions and regular farm operations to gain a better understanding of how these events impact livestock. The findings of this research will provide further insights to farmers on the impact of standard farm operations to enable them to make better decisions when caring for their fish.