Abstract
Climate change is expected to have a drastic effect on aquaculture worldwide. As we move forward with the agenda to increase and diversify aquaculture production, rising temperatures will have a progressively relevant impact on fish farming, linked to a multitude of issues associated with fish welfare. Temperature affects the physiology of both fish and pathogens, and has the potential to lead to significant increases in disease outbreaks within aquaculture systems, resulting in severe financial impacts. Significant shifts in future temperature regimes are projected for the Mediterranean Sea. We therefore aim to review and discuss the existing knowledge relating to disease outbreaks in the context of climate change in Mediterranean finfish aquaculture. The objective is to describe the effects of temperature on the physiology of both fish and pathogens, and moreover to list and discuss the principal diseases of the three main fish species farmed in the Mediterranean, namely gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata), European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax), and meagre (Argyrosomus regius). We will attempt to link the pathology of each disease to a specific temperature range, while discussing potential future disease threats associated with the available climate change trends for the Mediterranean Sea.
Highlights
Aquaculture in the Mediterranean is of significant economic importance and has exhibited steady growth as well as considerable diversification in the last few decades
For the Mediterranean, temperature projections for these scenarios are freely available via the EURO-CORDEX initiative, which provides high-resolution data downscaled from a wide array of regional climate models (RCM) [31]
The results suggest that low temperatures suppress primary antibody responses, but that the secondary antibody response can be elicited at low temperature if immunological memory has been established at a high temperature [130,131]
Summary
Aquaculture in the Mediterranean is of significant economic importance and has exhibited steady growth as well as considerable diversification in the last few decades. Significant shifts have been projected for the Mediterranean Sea regarding future temperature regimes, as well as shifts in ocean acidification, currents and water circulation, dissolved oxygen, salinity and the frequency of harmful algal blooms While each of these shifts will undoubtedly have considerable effects on marine life, it is widely accepted that the greatest impacts will be due to temperature, one of the main drivers of environmental change. The objective is to generally describe the recognized effects of temperature on the physiology of fish and pathogens, and to list and discuss the principal diseases of common farmed species in the Mediterranean Sea (gilthead seabream, European seabass and meagre). Due to the clear lack of data describing potential trends in disease outbreaks, an effort was made to collect and compile all the available fragmented information and link each known pathology to a specific temperature range
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