Salmon Aquaculture

The aquaculture of salmonids is the farming and harvesting of salmonids under controlled conditions for both commercial and recreational purposes. Salmonids (particularly salmon and rainbow trout), along with carp, and tilapia are the three most important fish species in aquaculture. The most commonly commercially farmed salmonid is the Atlantic salmon. In the U.S. Chinook salmon and rainbow trout are the most commonly farmed salmonids for recreational and subsistence fishing through the National Fish Hatchery System. In Europe, brown trout are the most commonly reared fish for recreational restocking.Commonly farmed nonsalmonid fish groups include tilapia, catfish, sea bass, and bream.

Feeding:

Salmonids are carnivorous and are currently being fed compound fish feeds containing fish meal and other feed ingredients, ranging from wheat byproducts to soybean meal and feather meal. Being aquatic carnivores, salmonids do not tolerate or properly metabolize many plant-based carbohydrates and use fats instead of carbohydrates as a primary energy source.

However, commercial economic animal diets are determined by least-cost linear programming models that are effectively competing with similar models for chicken and pig feeds for the same feed ingredients, and these models show that fish meal is more useful in aquatic diets than in chicken diets, where they can make the chickens taste like fish. Unfortunately, this substitution can result in lower levels of the highly valued omega-3 content in the farmed product. However, when vegetable oil is used in the growing diet as an energy source and a different finishing diet containing high omega-3 content fatty acids from either fish oil, algae oils, or some vegetable oils are used a few months before harvest, this problem is eliminated.

On a dry-dry basis, 2–4 kg of wild-caught fish are needed to produce 1 kg of salmon. The ratio may be reduced if non-fish sources are added. Wild salmon require about 10 kg of forage fish to produce 1 kg of salmon, as part of the normal trophic level energy transfer. The difference between the two numbers is related to farmed salmon feed containing other ingredients beyond fish meal and because farmed fish do not expend energy hunting.

In this Research Topic collection we invite researchers to submit manuscripts along the following themes:

Manuscript contributions that deal with salmon farming, feeding technologies and strategies, etc. Establishing sustainable fish farms, sustainable aquaculture topics.

-               Interdisciplinary research, observational field studies, experiments or manipulations, meta-analyses, reviews or modeling approaches are also welcome.

Journal of Fisheries Research is now accepting submissions on this topic. A standard EDITORIAL TRACKING SYSTEM is utilized for manuscript submission, review, editorial processing and tracking which can be securely accessed by the authors, reviewers and editors for monitoring and tracking the article processing. Manuscripts can be uploaded online at Editorial Tracking System (https://www.scholarscentral.org/submissions/fisheries-research.html) or forwarded to the Editorial Office at fisheriesres@emedscholar.com

Anna D Parker
Journal Manager
Journal of Fisheries Research
Email: fisheriesres@emedscholar.com