How to handle & transport fish while reducing stress

[bekateen]

Aupérin, B., & Baroiller, J.-F. 2015. Teleost Fish Handling and Transport under Reduced Stress Conditions. In, Fish Cytogenetic Techniques: Ray-Fin Fishes and Chondrichthyans (edited by Catherine Ozouf-Costaz, Eva Pisano, Fausto Foresti, & Lurdes Foresti de Almeida Toledo), pp. 1-10. CRC Press, Boca Ratan, FL. ISBN 9781482211993.

PRINCIPLES
With over 32,000 species, teleost fish have adapted to a tremendous range of aquatic habitats. At least 200 of them are used for aquaculture all over the world and even more are handled and transported for the ornamental fish market, as well as for bait or research purposes, including cytogenetic studies.

Scientific information on stress induced by handling and transport of the fish is very scarce, especially concerning wild species. Technical journals refer to random investigations carried out only once, and therefore these results can only give some initial ideas of the problem. Anyway, attention to the quality of the packaging and transport certainly decreases mortality. Schütz (2003) showed that transport mortality was significantly higher for non-CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) species than for CITES ones for mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians possibly because of greater care in handling CITES animals during transport, since public authorities pay closer attention to these species.

Fish transport can be divided into four steps: 1) capture, 2) loading, 3) shipment management and 4) recovery. Sensitivity of fish to these different steps differs greatly according to the species: for example, initial capture and loading appear to be very stressful for salmonids rather than the transport itself (Barton et al. 1980; Specker and Schreck 1980). Transport per se is stressful for carp (Svobodova et al. 1999).

APPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS

Before proceeding to any fish shipment from one site to another, especially for wild species, it is necessary to be informed of the latest specific modalities for access and transfer of fish species (licences, authorizations, veterinary certificates, quarantines...) according to the specific conservation, sanitary and transportation rules of the two countries (country of origin and final destination).

Fish's needs for water quality are dependent upon the species: Carps, tilapias or catfish can survive levels of oxygen deficit and suspended solids that would be lethal for salmonids.

Although it is difficult to generalize optimal conditions, we will give some basic principles here as a guideline.

This is a chapter in a book.

[Richard B]

Carps, tilapias or catfish can survive levels of oxygen deficit and suspended solids that would be lethal for salmonids

The quote is far to generalistic for my liking. Some cory species are known to self-poison in transport, some cats would be much more delicate than salmonids in terms of oxygen depletion

[TwoTankAmin]

I have to disagree with one part of the above information and that is the statement "Scientific information on stress induced by handling and transport of the fish is very scarce, especially concerning wild species."

I have read a few studies on this topic and if one uses Google Scholar to search for "transporting live fish" you get back over 50,000 results. This is far from being a scarcity of results. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=tra ... 3&as_vis=1 Change the search terms to "transporting live fish and stress" one still gets almost 49,000 results. Limit these returns to "Since 2014" and there are still over 17,000. Refine things so one searches for "transporting live catfish and stress" and to what has been published since 2014 and one still gets over 2,000 hits.

Of course, not all of these studies are exactly on topic, but even if it is only half or a third of them that are, that is still a decent amount of research on this topic.

[bekateen]

While I don't disagree with either of your posts, I'd urge caution about judging this article before actually reading the entire text. I don't say this because I've read it - I haven't; I don't yet have access to the book yet. But rather my perspectives are these: (1) This article is a review article, not an original research; by its design, it is probably meant to be a broad-stroke overview of the issues. (2) Regarding TTA's observation, I suspect the authors are referring specifically to research on the stress of transport and handling, not merely to papers which mention the animals are stressed while transported. (3) Building on point (1) above, this paper is only 10 pages long. That tells me that even if this is a good paper, it's probably very shallow and lacks lots of specific elaborations on their ideas.

In the end, this may not be a great source for answers for people who will be transporting fish, but it might be good for identifying areas of concern for people who are not experienced in such activities.