Developing intelligent monitoring of fish welfare

Developing intelligent monitoring of fish welfare

According to government guidelines and legislations laboratory animals must be monitored regularly to assure their health and welfare. However, the signs of ill health are often subtle to begin with and not easily detectable by a human observer. Further in large zebrafish facilities there are hundreds if not thousands of tanks that have to be checked at least daily. The FBI and CFA would provide accurate automated monitoring of zebrafish tanks in real time and alert carers to intervene to improve welfare. The FBI assesses welfare of individual zebrafish whereby real time behavioural information is used to give a welfare score to the animal before and after laboratory procedures (see Deakin et al. 2019 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45464-w). Whereas the CFA has been developed for use on group housed zebrafish and testing has demonstrated the ability to discern undisturbed fish from those subject to anaesthesia and further an invasive procedure (see Thomson et al. 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2019.108433). With further development both the FBI and CFA could be deployed in laboratory aquaria to monitor zebrafish welfare and further provide an alert system for carers or researchers to intervene and improve welfare. Potentially these tools can also be used on other laboratory fish species or within context where fishes are held in captivity.Need for collaborationTo further validate the FBI and CFA, collaboration is sought from any sector in aquatic animal health, behavioural monitoring, software engineering and hardware development.  Input from partners that could test and validate the tools in other contexts would also be welcome.3Rs ImpactCurrently there is no tool for assessing fish welfare. The FBI and CFA can accurately detect changes in behaviour in fish facilities, representing a major advance in welfare assessment and in identifying refinement opportunities in zebrafish facilities. For example, the tools will:Identify and alert facility staff to instances where fish welfare could be improved, allowing staff to intervene, for example, by providing pain relief.Ensure only healthy animals are used in experiments, improving the reliability and reproducibility of data generated in these studies and reducing the mortality rateIdentify humane end points which can be applied early in studies to reduce animal suffering.Locally we have used the FBI and CFA to identify the welfare status of zebrafish in a variety of experiments where these tools made an accurate assessment. At Liverpool this improved the welfare of approximately 300 fish per annum and thousands of stock fish. Further the implementation of analgesic protocols meant that any fish subject to an invasive procedure, for example, tagging, fin clip, exposure to low pH chemicals of muscle damage were provided with appropriate pain-relief thereby reducing the severity of the procedure. Applied globally, this technology has the potential to make a significant impact on the welfare of a large number of animals used within aquatic facilities. About the technology developerDr Lynne Sneddon is Director of Bioveterinary Science and Director of Ethics at the University of Liverpool and is a behavioural physiologist. Her main research interests lie in understanding the mechanisms of animal behaviour using an integrative approach adopting techniques in neurobiology, physiology and genomics. Much of Lynne’s work has aimed to understand how negative welfare states are experienced by fish and how techniques can be refined to improve welfare. Lynne was the first to identify nociceptors in fish that detect painful stimuli and has published prolifically in this area. She has driven the agenda with respect to improved treatment of fishes in experimentation and has focussed on zebrafish welfare assessment and the development of analgesic protocols.  About NC3RsThe National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is a UK-based scientific organisation that advances science, innovation and business, by supporting the development of new tools and technologies which replace or reduce animal use and improve animal welfare (termed the 3Rs). Partnerships made through this collaboration request may be eligible to apply for funding from the NC3Rs to support further method development and validation or to derisk the transfer and uptake of new models and tools across research groups. Next StepsIf this is of interest to you, please CONNECT through konfer for an open discussion.