AUTHOR=Alfonso Sébastien , Zupa Walter , Spedicato Maria Teresa , Lembo Giuseppe , Carbonara Pierluigi 

TITLE=Using Telemetry Sensors Mapping the Energetic Costs in European Sea Bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), as a Tool for Welfare Remote Monitoring in Aquaculture

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Animal Science

VOLUME=3

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/animal-science/articles/10.3389/fanim.2022.885850

DOI=10.3389/fanim.2022.885850

ISSN=2673-6225

ABSTRACT=<p>Physiological real-time monitoring could help to prevent health and welfare issues in farmed fishes. Among physiological features that can be of interest for such purposes, there is the metabolic rate. Its measurement remains, however, difficult to be implemented in the field. Thus, mapping the fish acceleration recorded by tag with the oxygen consumption rate (MO<sub>2</sub>) could be promising to counter those limitations and to be used as a proxy for energy expenditure in the aquaculture environments. In this study, we investigated the swimming performance (U<sub>crit</sub>) and the swimming efficiency (U<sub>opt</sub>, COT<sub>min</sub>), and we estimated the metabolic traits (standard and maximum metabolic rates, SMR and MMR, as well the absolute aerobic scope, AS) of European sea bass (<italic>Dicentrarchus labrax</italic>; <italic>n</italic> = 90) in swimming tunnel. Among all tested fish, 40 fishes were implanted with an acoustic transmitter to correlate the acceleration recorded by the sensor with the MO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, the mean SMR, MMR, and AS values displayed by sea bass were 89.8, 579.2, and 489.4 mgO<sub>2</sub> kg<sup>−1</sup> h<sup>−1</sup>, respectively. The U<sub>opt</sub> and COT<sub>min</sub> estimated for sea bass were on average 1.94 km h<sup>−1</sup> and 113.91 mgO<sub>2</sub> kg<sup>−1</sup> h<sup>−1</sup>, respectively. Overall, implantation of the sensor did not alter fish swimming performance or induced particular stress, able to increase MO<sub>2</sub> or decrease swimming efficiency in tagged fish. Finally, acceleration recorded by tag has been successfully correlated with MO<sub>2</sub> and fish mass using a sigmoid function (<italic>R</italic><sup>2</sup> = 0.88). Overall, such results would help for real-time monitoring of European sea bass health or welfare in the aquaculture environment in a framework of precision livestock farming.</p>