Acronym Salmon Soundscape
Category
Aquaculture
Title Sound in salmon farming: Mapping, measurement and risk assessment for behavioral and welfare consequences Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Frode Oppedal Coordinator email frodeo@hi.no
Coordinator institution
IMR - Institute of Marine Research (Norway)
Institutions involved
NMBU - Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway) ,
UNIMELB - University of Melbourne (Australia) ,
UiO - University of Oslo (Norway) ,
Start year 2022 End year 2023 Funding (€) € 491,642 Website https://www.fhf.no/prosjekter/prosjektbasen/901744/ Summary Hearing is a key sense in the salmon's life, providing information from all three dimensions and is important in many aspects, including communication, detection of food and predators. Much is known about the hearing ability of both wild and farmed fish, but there are still important gaps in knowledge about how environmental noise affects fish. In hatcheries and marine facilities, the salmon experience varying degrees of noise. The extent and effect that sound has on salmon is not known in detail, and there is a need to investigate whether sound in the form of noise is a possible stress factor for salmon in farms. The impact can be behavioral or physiological, resulting in reduced hearing or, in the worst case, a fatal outcome. In open sea cages there are a number of possible sources of noise as a result of infrastructure, weather conditions, operations and especially boat traffic.
Although salmonids are adaptable to deviating factors that occur, noise can be a challenge. There is a need for preliminary studies in the farming industry, where the aim is to map which noise sources exist and whether these actually affect the fish's health and welfare. Such knowledge will be the starting point for recommendations on measures against such noise factors/sources.
Objectives:
• To comprehensively review and publish the status of current knowledge about the effects of sounds, how salmon process sound, how they react and how adaptable they are in salmon farming environments.
• To map the short- and long-term sound picture at salmon farming locations in land-based facilities and cages to establish a baseline for the sounds that salmon are exposed to in industrial settings and identify the frequency, volume and duration of sounds that can be stressful for farmed fish.
• To use the baseline of measured sounds in hatcheries and the sea to test the effect of possible harmful sound frequency, volume and duration on salmon behaviour, stress and welfare in small and large experiments.
• To collate knowledge from work packages 1–3 and develop a hierarchy of possible risk measures for noise on aquaculture facilities and communicate these to the industry.
Keywords
Risk assessment;
Land-based aquaculture;
Salmon;
Anthropic activity;
Fish;
Impacts;
Cage aquaculture;
Open sea aquaculture;
Animal welfare;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
Marine Region Map
