Salmon

Editorial: Fish welfare in aquaculture and research—where are we going?

Rapid technical developments are taking place in aquaculture, and its production is increasing globally every year by more than 4%. Research is the necessary foundation for politics to define reasonable regulations and recommend guidelines for aquaculture, but also the basis...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Rearing & Weaning, Stocking Density, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Fish, Other Fish, Salmon, Trout, Zebrafish

Citation: Pietsch, C. 2025. Editorial: Fish welfare in aquaculture and research—where are we going? Animals 15(16), 2367.

Mental Health and Well-being in Animals

Since the publication of the first edition of this book, professional and public concern for the well-being of animals has continued to increase throughout the world. Advances in research and technologies have yielded an enormous amount of new knowledge about...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: All/General, Baboon, Bird, Capuchin, Cat, Chicken, Chimpanzee, Crocodile & Alligator, Dog, Equine, Fish, Gibbon, Goat, Lemur, Lizard, Macaque, Marmoset, Nonhuman Primate, Other Animal, Other Nonhuman Primate, Owl Monkey, Parrot, Pig, Rabbit, Reptile, Salmon, Sheep, Snake, Squirrel Monkey, Trout, Turtle & Tortoise, Vervet (African Green Monkey)

Citation: McMillan, F. D. (Ed.) 2025. Mental Health and Well-being in Animals (3rd ed.). CAB International, Oxfordshire, UK. 464 p.

An adaptable, user-friendly score sheet to monitor welfare in experimental fish

Fish are increasingly used as experimental animals across research fields. Currently, around a quarter of all experimental animals used are fish. Less than 20% of these are standard model species. Welfare assessments for experimental fish are in their infancy compared...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Fish, Other Fish, Salmon, Shark & Ray, Tilapia, Trout, Zebrafish

Citation: Flueck-Giraud, M., Schmidt-Posthaus, H., Bergadano, A. et al. 2025. An adaptable, user-friendly score sheet to monitor welfare in experimental fish. Laboratory Animals 59(2), 226–241.

Early-life environmental enrichment promotes positive animal welfare for juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in aquaculture research (2025)

Early life experiences have long-lasting effects on behaviour and physiology, influencing development of adaptive natural behaviours. Enriching farmed environments encourages expression of natural behaviours in captive fish, promoting positive animal welfare, important for conducting valid and reproducible research and informing...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Environmental EnrichmentAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Prentice, P. M., Chivite Alcalde, M., Císař, P. et al. 2025. Early-life environmental enrichment promotes positive animal welfare for juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in aquaculture research. Scientific Reports 15(1), 5828.

Acute effect of short-term benzocaine anesthesia on the skin mucus microbiome of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

Routine aquaculture practices such as capture, transportation, and handling can disrupt the relationship between commensal and opportunistic bacteria in the fish skin microbiome. Anesthetic baths are a common welfare practice in aquaculture to reduce stress during handling. However, to date,...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Anesthesia & SedationAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Martins, P., Pimentel, T., Ribeiro, N. et al. 2025. Acute effect of short-term benzocaine anesthesia on the skin mucus microbiome of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Animals 15(11), 1566.

The effects of different feed ration levels on growth, welfare rating, and early maturation in juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

To investigate the possible effect of different feed ration levels on the growth, welfare, and early maturation of juvenile Atlantic salmon, 450 salmon parr with a mean (±standard error) initial weight of 51.6 g (±0.8) were reared in triplicate under...

Year Published: 2024Topics: Husbandry & ManagementAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Imsland, A. K. D., Methúsalemsson, H. 2024. The effects of different feed ration levels on growth, welfare rating, and early maturation in juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Fishes 9(2), 70.

Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge

Animal welfare assessments have struggled to investigate the emotional states of animals while focusing solely on available empirical evidence. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) may provide insights into an animal's subjective experiences without compromising scientific rigor. Rather than assessing explicit, physical...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Wiese, T. R., Rey Planellas, S., Betancor, M. et al. 2023. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.

Impacts of temperature on the growth, feed utilization, stress, and hemato-immune responses of cherry salmon (Oncorhynchus masou)

Cherry salmon (Oncorhynchus masou) hold commercial value in aquaculture, and there is a need for controlled laboratory studies to isolate the specific effects of temperature on their growth, feeding, and well-being. We examined the effects of different temperatures (10 °C,...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Husbandry & ManagementAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Lee, J.-W., Balasubramanian, B. 2023. Impacts of temperature on the growth, feed utilization, stress, and hemato-immune responses of cherry salmon (Oncorhynchus masou). Animals 13(24), 3870.

Fish intelligence, sentience and ethics

Fish are one of the most highly utilised vertebrate taxa by humans; they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet and are widely used for scientific...

Year Published: 2015Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Regulations & Ethical ReviewAnimal Type: Fish, Other Fish, Salmon, Shark & Ray, Tilapia, Trout, Zebrafish

Citation: Brown, C. 2015. Fish intelligence, sentience and ethics. Animal Cognition 18(1), 1–17.

Evaluation of healing progression at surgical incision sites and the use of antiseptics for enhancing post-operative survival in subyearling Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)

In an attempt to develop more effective surgical implantation methods for fish, surgical incisions typical of those made for implanting micro-acoustic transmitters into the peritoneal cavity were evaluated on a weekly basis for healing progression using a suite of metrics....

Year Published: 2023Topics: Identification Method, Surgery & Post-OpAnimal Type: Fish, Salmon

Citation: Cameron, A. S., Rub, A. M. W., Sandford, B. P. 2023. Evaluation of healing progression at surgical incision sites and the use of antiseptics for enhancing post-operative survival in subyearling Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). PLOS ONE 18(7), e0288056.