Assessment of activity and heart rate as indicators for acute stress in Atlantic salmon

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess whether activity and heart rate sensor implants can be used to measure stress and thus estimate one important welfare indicator for fish in aquaculture pens, and if such measurements correlate to physiological factors measured through blood sampling. The experiment consisted of two parts: i) a bio-logger study where implanted sensors were used to monitor activity and heart rates for fish undergoing stress (crowding); and ii) an analysis of blood constituents (cortisol, glucose, lactate, and chloride) of a second group of fish undergoing the same treatment. We found that activity measurements can be used to track high-impact stress events but may not be suitable to discern possibly nuanced reactions to stress impacts of lower magnitude. While heart rate was measured reliably, e.g., in showing clear circadian rhythms, it was no credible proxy for predicting stress in this study. Our results thus underline challenges observed in previous work around the use of heart rate as stress indicator, and imply that the translation of its meaning into a proxy for stress needs further work. Although tag-based monitoring of stress is not without its difficulties, studies such as this provide a wealth of information on salmon behaviour and physiology, and the links between these.