In July 2021, land-based salmon producer Atlantic Sapphire reported the death of 400 tonnes of salmon at its recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) in Denmark. The incident affected one of the saltwater grow-out systems and 17 of the facility’s fishwere lost. This followed a loss in March, when around 500,000 salmon, averaging 1kg each, died at the company's RAS in Florida. Aquaculture may be continuously growing but assessing and benchmarking fish welfare is still challenging. Fish and other species are held in an environment that can be difficult to inspect, while their behavioural patterns are not as intuitive to understand as those of terrestrial animals. Large populations in tanks can further impair such assessments and benchmarking, but forevery report of mortalities, there are increasing concerns among consumers and farmers for the health and welfare of farmed species. Based in Singapore, Erika Chong is a technical manager at Blue Aqua, a shrimp aquaculture firm that is developing Singapore's first RAS farm for the production of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). She says that biosecurity breaches and a system breakdown are among the main causes of mortality in closed containment systems.
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