While salmon welfare has received significant research attention, dozens of other farmed aquatic species have virtually no welfare standards or research base.
The welfare science for farmed fish is heavily concentrated on Atlantic salmon and, to a lesser extent, rainbow trout. For the hundreds of other species farmed globally — including many with large and growing production volumes — welfare research is largely absent. This creates a situation where welfare improvements for salmon cannot be translated to other species because the behavioral, physiological, and environmental welfare needs of those species are simply unknown. Prioritizing welfare research for high-volume underresearched farmed species is one of the highest-leverage investments available in aquaculture welfare science.