Farmed Salmon May Be Depressed
A Fishes Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Lukas Jasiunas, Faunalytics.org
February 2020

Compared to healthy fishes, these salmon are suggested to experience chronic stress. In fact, the researchers show that the fishes’ brains are not responsive to additional acute stress, representing a classic example of when regulatory mechanisms are unable to react to further challenges, indicating a depressive state.

Photo by WikiMedia user OgreBot Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Due to the increasing number of fishes being farmed for human consumption, more and more academic interest is being directed towards farmed fish neurobiology and welfare. Concerns for the welfare farmed fishes, as well as those being used as replacements for mammalian biomedical models in research, are on the rise. In this study, a group of researchers from Northern Europe looked at how the brains of physically underdeveloped salmon react to stress.

In commercial fish farms, small fishes floating dully at the surface are a common sight. They typically exhibit anorexia and are inhibited behaviorally. Although such ‘dropouts’ are well known among farmers, very little is actually known about what leads to such disabilities. Surprisingly, growth-stunted fishes comprise up to a quarter of all farmed fish.

Read  more at Farmed Salmon May Be Depressed.

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