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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1497336

Acoustic tags versus camera -A Case Study on Feeding Behaviour of European seabass in Sea Cages

Provisionally accepted
I-Hao Chen I-Hao Chen 1*Dimitra Georgopoulou Dimitra Georgopoulou 2Lars O.E. Ebbesson Lars O.E. Ebbesson 1Dimitris Voskakis Dimitris Voskakis 2Antonella Zanna Munthe-Kaas Antonella Zanna Munthe-Kaas 3Nikos Papandroulakis Nikos Papandroulakis 2
  • 1 Fish Biology & Aquaculture Group, Climate & Environment Division, Norwegian Research Institute (NORCE), Bergen, Norway
  • 2 Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece
  • 3 Department of Mathematics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    With the expansion of the aquaculture industry, the need arises for scalable, reliable, and robust methods to assess the fish behaviour in sea cages to guide operational management, which includes feeding optimisation and welfare assessments. Both fish cage monitoring utilising acoustic telemetry transmitters and underwater cameras are well-studied. However, the relationship between those two different measurement types seems to have not been explored nor have they been evaluated together in one experimental site. In our one-month study, we compared the activity of 14 sentinel fish and the AI-inferred speed of individuals from the European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) sea cage population in three feeding trials. Comparisons include a maximum activity comparison using persistent peaks, fish behavioural pattern establishment and retention, as well as periodical behavioural patterns. Our results demonstrate that under certain circumstances, both technologies are interchangeable from the perspective of persistent peaks and periodicity, but complementary when it comes to behaviour analysis such as Food Anticipatory Behaviour (FAB). We anticipate that our findings will stimulate advances where multiple sensor types are in use to achieve a more holistic understanding of fish behaviour in the aquaculture sector using underwater technologies.

    Keywords: Acoustic transmitters, camera speed analysis, fish welfare, Precision Fish Farming, persistent peaks, Feeding management, European seabass, marine cage farming

    Received: 16 Sep 2024; Accepted: 30 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Georgopoulou, Ebbesson, Voskakis, Munthe-Kaas and Papandroulakis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: I-Hao Chen, Fish Biology & Aquaculture Group, Climate & Environment Division, Norwegian Research Institute (NORCE), Bergen, Norway

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.