CIM’s participation in a European project on the blue bioeconomy with direct industrial application

The European network Marinnonet, coordinated by the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo and funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area program, has just launched the projects selected in its second call for pilot initiatives in the blue bioeconomy with direct application in the productive sector. Seven initiatives have been chosen, featuring R&D&i activities in three key areas: sustainable aquaculture, marine observation technologies, and industrial products derived from the sea.

One of these projects involves researchers from the PhysToFish group at CIM. Funded with up to €30,000 and lasting nine months, these projects are designed as practical examples of how research and industry can collaborate to develop technologies and products that meet the needs of productive sectors and society.

Tools to assess fish welfare in aquaculture

The Colorhynchus project, led by Mauro Chivite Alcalde from CIM’s PhysToFish group, focuses on validating real-time welfare indicators for rainbow trout in aquaculture. The work addresses one of the main current limitations in aquaculture: the difficulty of identifying welfare problems before they lead to economic losses or require veterinary interventions, thereby enhancing sustainability and animal welfare.
“Assessing the welfare level of an animal is a complex task, and in the case of fish it is especially challenging due to biological differences compared to terrestrial animals, for which animal welfare studies have been developed over decades. That is why validating reliable, reproducible, and easy-to-apply welfare indicators for fish constitutes a scientific challenge,” explains the researcher.

Colorhynchus will study three complementary and non-invasive parameters—skin darkening, mucus quality, and behavioral synchronization—as early-warning tools that can be implemented in an accessible way on farms of all sizes.

The consortium includes the participation of the Plentzia Marine Station of UPV/EHU and the company Bio1OneHealth, Lda. “Securing funding to develop this pilot project is an opportunity to contribute to the development of practical tools that allow early assessment of fish welfare. In the context of aquaculture, having indicators capable of signaling compromised welfare enables the sector to act preventively, minimizing animal suffering while strengthening the viability of the industry,” states the researcher.

One of the added values of the initiative is that these tools are designed to be implemented in small and medium-sized aquaculture farms, without the need for specialized training or complex technologies, thus addressing the challenges previously identified by the Marinnonet community.