Year: 2026
Grant: £3,000
Katherine Sloman
University of the West of Scotland, UK
Fishes represent important scientific models, a key source of protein for human consumption through aquaculture and fisheries, and are a popular focus of human enjoyment through sport fisheries, home and public aquaria. All of these ways in which humans interact with fishes have impacts on their welfare. Raising awareness of fish welfare among the wider fish biology community is of vital importance, both to ensure the welfare of fish used in research is appropriately considered, and that knowledge generated is utilised effectively in improving fish welfare in all situations.
We are organizing a session titled ‘Using behaviour and physiology to understand fish welfare’ at the 16th International Congress on the Biology of Fish, which is being held at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver 12-16 July 2026. The conference is organized by the Physiology Section of the American Fisheries Society and attracts a large audience from broad areas of fish biology. It is important that fish welfare is represented at the Congress, and provides an opportunity to promote and discuss fish welfare on a global platform.
We have planned a full-day session, along with contributions to a poster session, that will bring together researchers with a focus on fish welfare from a variety of different contexts. This session aims to discuss how we can better understand fish welfare by sharing knowledge and refinements from across this range of scenarios.
The session will have a positive effect on fish welfare by bringing together researchers from a wide variety of areas where humans interact with fishes. Hosting a one-day session within a wider Fish Biology Congress, increases the interaction with other fish researchers who would ordinarily not attend fish welfare conferences. This provides the potential to broaden awareness of fish welfare and build future collaborations where information may otherwise go unshared. The session will be open to the submission of talks by students and will therefore provide education of new generation researchers in current fish welfare issues.