Transport Welfare of Farmed Fish During Harvest

Live fish transport during harvest from aquaculture facilities involves crowding, oxygen depletion, physical injury, and handling stress that can cause significant welfare harm.

Key Facts

Farmed fish are typically crowded and pumped from nets to live transport vessels during harvest
Oxygen depletion during crowding causes hypoxic stress within minutes in sensitive species
Mechanical pumping systems cause scale loss, fin damage, and internal haemorrhaging
Atlantic salmon transport studies show cortisol spikes comparable to severe injury when crowded
Crowding for transport can last 30 minutes to several hours depending on facility design
Improved pump designs and oxygen supplementation can substantially reduce transport mortality and stress

Welfare Considerations

Fish transport during harvest is a high-intensity welfare event that can erase weeks of good husbandry in minutes. The combination of crowding, pumping, oxygen depletion, temperature shock, and physical handling creates profound acute stress responses including fear, pain, and hypoxia. Welfare-conscious harvest design minimises crowding time, uses oxygen supplementation, employs gentler pump systems, and stuns fish as quickly as possible after crowding begins. These improvements require investment but yield benefits in product quality as well as welfare.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood certified by schemes that include harvest welfare standards
Advocate for harvest welfare to be included in aquaculture certification criteria
Support research into stunning technologies applicable at aquaculture scale
Ask seafood retailers what they know about their suppliers harvest practices
Reduce consumption of farmed fish from large-scale operations with poor welfare track records