Sparus aurata is a sparid from the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, representing one of the most frequently farmed species in Mediterranean marine finfish aquaculture besides Dicentrarchus labrax. It is mostly cultured in sea cages, to a lesser degree also in tanks, raceways, and ponds. The very low FishEthoScore of Sparus aurata is mainly due to high levels of aggression, needs of substrate, stress under farming conditions, and high levels of deformations. Extensive farming providing substrate could be a remediation for some of the problems and help improve fish welfare. Individual farming strategies with mandatory protocols including continuous monitoring are a major stepping stone towards preventing poor welfare and improving the sustainable production of this species. Further research is needed on current farming conditions as well as home range use and aggregation behaviour in the wild.
For details see: WelfareCheck | farm (latest major release: 2022-12-12)In 2022, our colleagues from FishEthoGroup were invited to write a report for the Aquaculture Advisory Council of the European Commission on the topic of "Using ethology to improve farmed fish welfare and production". This report was recently published anew with an updated appendix. For this report, FishEthoGroup collaborated with the fair-fish database to give a summary of the situation of 5 of the most frequently farmed species in Europe (Sparus aurata, Dicentrarchus labrax, Oncorhynchus mykiss, Salmo salar, Cyprinus carpio). We from the fair-fish database used the opportunity to update these 5 profiles (of which you have read in this News section in the past months). Among them was that of Salmo salar, the Atlantic salmon, which was enriched with a plethora of papers and was transferred to our latest more transparent and user-friendly formatting scheme. Thanks to the update, we could get rid of a couple of question marks in the welfare assessment, but the new findings only manifested what was hinted at before: except at slaughter, Salmo salar cannot experience good welfare in captivity even under the best possible conditions.
Being one of the most frequently farmed species in the Mediterranean after European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax), it was time for an update of our Gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) Overview and Short profile. In the Short profile, please find - along with our newly-established consistent age class and label structure - more detailed information on criteria, up to date farming facility data, and more recent papers incorporated. This helped eliminate some of the question marks we had in the welfare assessment, although there are still many knowledge gaps to fill. The FishEthoScore remains very low, indicating a low probability for achieving high welfare both under minimal and high-standard farming conditions.
