Project objectives and major achievement during the reporting period

1. To gain comprehensive knowledge on health and welfare in farmed fish by focusing on two of the major aquaculture species in Europe, Atlantic salmon and sea bass, not only to improve the farming situation for these fish, but to transfer the obtained knowledge to other important aquaculture species such as rainbow trout and sea bream.

2. To study a range of the most important environmental factors and husbandry practices in freshwater-, seawater- and recirculation-system aquaculture in order to identify how these may compromise welfare and health of farmed fish.

3. To gain an integrated understanding of the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the interactions of husbandry practices and environment on stress conditions affecting welfare and diseases resistance in farmed fish.

4. To identify innate and acquired immune parameters affected by environmental factors and husbandry practices resulting in compromised welfare and health, and to develop effective molecular tools to study and monitor the immune function, barrier functions and stress responses of farmed fish.

Based on the above objectives, it is the final goal of the WEALTH project to develop and validate operational husbandry protocols for improved welfare and health of farmed fish, including methods for early prediction and management of disease outbreaks and compromised welfare. The European aquaculture industry will be encouraged to adopt these protocols under the devise “welfare and health creates WEALTH!”.

The project consists of five interlinked workpackages to achieve these objectives, summarised in Figure 1.

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Short implementation report