Abstract
To manage health conditions of farmed fish and other living creatures, a simple method to measure bioelectric signals of the creatures in seawater is expected. A novel method to measure bioelectric signals by utilizing the conductivity of seawater surrounding the entire body of a fish is proposed. As for the proposed method, a needle-type internal electrode is inserted into the fish’s muscle at a certain measurement point, and an external electrode is sunk in seawater. The internal electrode is isolated from the seawater by virtue of being inserted in the fish. Bioelectric signals generated between the external and internal electrodes are then measured. By sharing the external electrode with the internal electrode, it is possible to measure bioelectric signals with half the number of bioelectrodes used by conventional methods. To demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method, two internal electrodes were inserted into different parts (above the gills and near the tail) of three fish (Parajulis poecilepterus, ca. 20 cm fork length) kept in a tank. The proposed method obtained reliable bioelectric signals corresponding to electrocardiograms (ECGs) and electromyograms (EMGs) from each part of the individual fish.
Highlights
To manage health conditions of farmed fish and other living creatures, a simple method to measure bioelectric signals of the creatures in seawater is expected
From the viewpoints of physiology, ethology, and environmentology, marine animals have been studied by bioelectric m easurement[1,2,3,4], bio-logging[5,6,7,8,9], and DNA a nalysis[10,11,12,13,14,15], respectively
The electrocardiogram (ECG), which is a kind of bioelectric measurement, carries high expectations because it can evaluate psychological stress of marine animals just as it can evaluate that of humans[16,17,18,19]
Summary
To manage health conditions of farmed fish and other living creatures, a simple method to measure bioelectric signals of the creatures in seawater is expected. A novel method to measure bioelectric signals by utilizing the conductivity of seawater surrounding the entire body of a fish is proposed. Bioelectric signals generated between the external and internal electrodes are measured. By sharing the external electrode with the internal electrode, it is possible to measure bioelectric signals with half the number of bioelectrodes used by conventional methods. The animal can often become agitated without anesthesia and consume much physical energy when the electrodes are implanted into its body To reduce these burdens, we propose a novel method of measuring bioelectric signals—which utilizes the conductivity of seawater surrounding the animal—by using only one bioelectrode attached at each measurement point (in contrast to the conventional method, which requires a pair of bioelectrodes).
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