Challenges and benefits of applying fish behaviour to improve production and welfare in industrial aquaculture

Abstract

AbstractAn understanding of behaviour is used in zoos, laboratories and agriculture to reduce stressful aspects of the captive environment for animals. While fish are one of the most cultivated of all vertebrate groups, incorporating their behaviour into production management has proved elusive. Here, we evaluate the current evidence base relating to use of (i) innate behaviours of fish and (ii) their ability to learn new behaviours via human‐mediated training or through social learning, in fish farms. Studies that tested habituation and conditioning (training) as a tool to improve welfare demonstrate positive effects for improving fish welfare and coping capacity. However, methods solely reliant on innate behavioural responses to stimuli will always be imperfect, due to variation in individual responses which are often context dependent. To date, there has been no successful demonstration of social learning as a tool for aquaculture. While many experimental scale studies report promising results, few have translated to commercial scale, highlighting a mismatch between theoretical and practical use and cautions against extrapolation of results from small‐scale studies to commercial situations. While some promising evidence exists that fish behaviour can be integrated into farm management, logistical and scale‐related hurdles must be overcome before this can occur. We conclude that fish behaviour is an additional and currently under‐researched resource that could be integrated into farm practices to improve production and welfare in industrial aquaculture.