Review: current can help fish swim off stress
Providing active fish species with a current to swim against improves recovery from acute stresses such as handling or confinement, according to a new scientific article.
The authors reviewed knowledge on applications of sustained aerobic swimming as a tool to promote productivity and welfare of farmed fish species.
According to the article’s abstract, there has been extensive interest in whether providing a current to swim against can promote growth in active fish species.
Varied studies
The results are not conclusive, say the authors, but the studies have varied in species, life stage, swimming speed applied, feeding regime, stocking density and other factors.
Therefore, much remains to be understood about mechanisms underlying findings of “swimming‐enhanced growth”, in particular to demonstrate that swimming can improve feed conversion ratio and dietary protein retention under true aquaculture conditions.
Evidence is mixed on whether swimming can alleviate chronic stress, but swimming does improve recovery from acute stresses such as handling or confinement.
Inhibiting maturation
There is promising evidence that swimming can inhibit precocious sexual maturation in some species, so studies should be broadened to other species where precocious maturation is a problem, the authors say.
The article, Aerobic swimming in intensive finfish aquaculture: applications for production, mitigation and selection, is published in the journal Reviews in Aquaculture. Read the abstract here.
