Environmental enrichment for farmed fish can improve welfare by reducing stress, supporting natural behaviors, and decreasing aggressive interactions.
Fish enrichment is an emerging area of aquaculture welfare science that has demonstrated significant potential for improving welfare with relatively low cost. Adding structures that create visual complexity, providing flow regimes that allow exercise, managing photoperiods, and designing tanks to reduce crowding stress all have documented welfare benefits. Reduced stress from enriched environments improves immune function, reduces disease susceptibility, and often improves feed conversion efficiency, creating alignment between welfare and production goals. Despite the evidence base, enrichment is rarely implemented in commercial aquaculture due to inertia and perceived costs.