News
Call for Applications: Postdoctoral Researcher / Laboratory Manager
FishEthoGroup is seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher / Laboratory Manager with expertise in aquatic comparative physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology to join our team at CCMAR, University of Algarve (Campus of Gambelas) in Faro, Portugal.
The position combines laboratory management and research activities within the WELL4CATCH project and related research on fish physiology, stress and welfare.
Expected start: 1 March 2027
Application deadline: 30 November 2026 (23:59, Lisbon time)
Apply: Send your CV (up tp 3 pages), cover letter (1 page) and PhD certificate to careers@fishethogroup.net.
For more information, please click here.
(posted on Nov. 12, 2026)
New paper out! 🐟🔬
What do we know about the stressors faced by farmed aquatic animals, and where are the gaps in our scientific knowledge?
Our team member Caroline Marques Maia recently co-authored a review study exploring stressors and mitigation strategies across species, life stages, and farming phases, using evidence from the fair-fish database.
🔎 Key findings:
▪️ Handling, crowding, and transport are the most frequently reported stressors.
▪️ Mitigation strategies are reported for much fewer species than stressors.
▪️Food supplementation, anesthesia, acclimatization, and shelters are the most investigated stress mitigators.
▪️ Research has focused mainly on juveniles and the rearing phase, leaving other life stages and farming phases underrepresented.
💡 Take-home message: Improving the welfare of farmed aquatic animals requires not only understanding stressors and how to mitigate them, but also identifying knowledge gaps to guide future research and better-informed welfare practices.
📖 Read the full paper here.
(posted on Nov. 11, 2026)
New team member!
📢 We are pleased to welcome Leigh Gaffney to the FishEthoGroup!
Leigh is a Canadian fish welfare scientist with a background in fish behaviour, ecology, and welfare. Her research has primarily focused on salmonid welfare, and she brings several years of experience as a research biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She also contributes to the development of animal welfare guidelines and standards in Canada and provides scientific consultancy to several organisations.
As a Junior Researcher at FishEthoGroup, Leigh will focus on validating welfare indicators for on-farm assessments of gilthead seabream, contributing to the development of more reliable approaches to fish welfare assessment in aquaculture.
Welcome to the team, Leigh! 🐟
(posted on Oct. 29, 2026)
New podcast episode!
🐟🧠 Can fishes learn, remember, and solve problems? Absolutely!
When we think about animal learning, mammals and birds often come to mind. However, scientific research shows that fishes are also capable of learning.
In the latest episode of The Fish Mind programme at our Fish Talk podcast, Caroline Marques Maia and Pedro Duarte explore the fascinating world of fish learning, from habituation and conditioning to spatial learning and learning by observation.
We also look at some remarkable experiments: archerfish trained to recognise human faces in photographs, and goldfish that learned to navigate a room by controlling a motorised vehicle! 🚗🐠
Understanding how fishes learn is not only fascinating from a scientific perspective. It can also help us better understand their needs and behaviour, with important implications for fish welfare.
🎧 Listen to the new episode of The Fish Mind on Spotify here or through the FishEthoGroup poddcast page here.
(posted on Oct. 22, 2026)
New paper out!
Why do individual fish respond differently to the same challenges? Our team member Pablo Arechavala-Lopez and our student Esther Hoyo Alvarez recently co-authored a study exploring individual differences in behaviour, cognition, and brain gene expression in juvenile European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax).
🔎 Key findings:
▪️ Individuals showed consistent differences in exploration, persistence, and coping styles.
▪️ Coping styles varied along a continuum, from more reactive to more proactive profiles.
▪️ Brain gene expression patterns were associated with neuronal activity, synaptic plasticity, and stress responses, with complex relationships to behavioural profiles.
💡 Take-home message: Fish individuality is multidimensional. Understanding these differences is essential for interpreting cognitive performance and how fish respond to their environment, with potential implications for welfare research.
📖 Read the full paper here.
(posted on Oct. 19, 2026)
> New blog post!
Over the years, scientific research has documented several forms of learning in fishes, including habituation, classical and operant conditioning, spatial learning, and learning by observation.
Some findings are particularly fascinating: archerfish can learn to distinguish human faces, while goldfish have even learned to navigate a motorized vehicle by controlling its movements through their swimming behaviour.
💡 In our latest post on The Fish Mind section of the ConsCIÊNCIA Animal blog, we explore how fishes learn, discover remarkable experiments that reveal their cognitive abilities, and examine what these findings tell us about the flexibility and complexity of fish behaviour.
> The The Fish Mind section, developed by FishEthoGroup, shares scientific insights into fish sentience, cognition, behaviour, and welfare.
🔗 Read the post here.
(posted on Oct. 13, 2026)
> “Fish welfare is entering an era of consolidation.”
This statement from our team member Joao L. Saraiva is particularly timely following the publication of a new review in the Journal of Fish Biology, co-authored by João and Pablo from our team.
The review synthesises recent developments in fish welfare science while examining the challenges that remain for the field — from understanding fish cognition, affective states and pain to improving welfare assessment and addressing emerging research needs.
This progress is also taking place within a broader European movement towards stronger collaboration in animal health and welfare, including through the European Partnership on Animal Health and Welfare (EUPAHW).
For fish welfare, this represents an important moment: a growing body of evidence, increasing scientific collaboration and a clearer recognition of the importance of aquatic animal welfare.
At FishEthoGroup, we are proud to contribute to this growing field through research, collaboration and science communication.
🐟 There is still much to learn — but the foundations are stronger than ever.
(posted on Oct. 6, 2026)
FEG at Aquaculture Europe 2026!
> FishEthoGroup at Aquaculture Europe 2026
We were pleased to see three members of the FishEthoGroup team — Joao L. Saraiva, Pablo Arechavala-Lopez and Fábio Barroso — representing FEG at Aquaculture Europe 2026, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 28 September to 1 October.
This year's conference, organised around the theme “Aquaculture in Global Change”, brought together the international aquaculture community to exchange knowledge on the challenges and opportunities facing the sector.
Our team contributed through chairing sessions, scientific talks and discussions focused on topics connected to fish behaviour, welfare and the development of more welfare-oriented approaches to aquaculture.
Scientific conferences such as Aquaculture Europe are essential spaces for sharing evidence, challenging ideas and building collaborations. We are glad to contribute to this dialogue and to continue bringing fish behaviour and welfare to the centre of discussions about the future of aquaculture.
> Thank you to the organisers, colleagues and everyone who joined our presentations and discussions in Ljubljana.
(posted on Oct. 2, 2026)
> Fish welfare in a changing world: new developments and current challenges
Our team member Joao Saraiva participated in the 6th Meeting of the International Joint Research Center of Marine Sciences, held on 23–24 September at the University of Algarve, Portugal. He presented a talk addressing recent developments in fish welfare science and some of the key challenges currently shaping the field.
The meeting brought together researchers from CCMAR, the University of Algarve, and Shanghai Ocean University, fostering scientific exchange and international collaboration across different areas of marine sciences.
As the field of fish welfare continues to evolve, collaboration and interdisciplinary research remain essential to advancing scientific understanding and supporting better practices for aquatic animals.
> We are glad to be part of this ongoing scientific dialogue. 🌊🐟
(posted on Sept. 28, 2026)
🐟 New Fish Five episode at our Fish Talk podcast: Behavioural diversity and welfare in aquaculture
Understanding fish behaviour is an important part of understanding their welfare. But how much can individual behavioural differences tell us about the way fishes experience and respond to their environment?
In our newest Fish Five episode, Professor Sunil Kadri discusses behavioural diversity and its relevance to fish welfare in aquaculture. The conversation explores consistent behavioural differences in fishes and how recognising them can contribute to more informed approaches to fish management and welfare assessment.
> Fish Five is a special interview series, where invited experts answer five thought-provoking questions about fish behaviour, cognition, physiology, and welfare.
🎧 Listen to the episode on Spotify here or visit our podcast page here.
(posted on Sept. 21, 2026)
💧 Water quality is an important component of aquatic animal welfare.
Aquatic animals are continuously exposed to the conditions of their surrounding environment. Water quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH and turbidity, and the presence of pollutants can influence physiological processes, behavioural responses and the ability of fishes to cope with environmental challenges.
For this reason, monitoring water quality and reducing sources of aquatic pollution are not only environmental priorities — they are also relevant to animal welfare.
In aquaculture, reliable water quality monitoring is an essential part of good management. In natural ecosystems, maintaining healthy aquatic environments helps safeguard the conditions on which aquatic animals depend.
🌊 Healthy waters are essential for healthy aquatic life.
(posted on Sept. 18, 2026)
Fish welfare is more than the absence of suffering! 🐟
▪️ For decades, animal welfare focused mainly on keeping animals healthy and protecting them from pain, fear and disease. These remain essential—but good welfare involves more than avoiding negative experiences. It also means giving animals opportunities to experience positive affective states and rewarding experiences.
✔️ Because emotions cannot be measured directly, researchers use behavioural indicators to investigate positive welfare in fishes. Exploration, stable social interactions, appropriate feeding, learning, play-like behaviours, and active engagement with the environment may all provide valuable clues about how fish are experiencing their lives.
▪️Preference and motivation tests reveal what fish choose—and what they are willing to work for. Fishes can have preferences for colours, substrates, plants and even particular social companions. Providing opportunities to explore, interact, choose, learn, and engage with their environment can therefore be an important part of promoting positive welfare.
> Main sources: Assessment of positive welfare: A review (Yeates & Main, 2008); Positive welfare for fishes: Rationale and areas for future study (Fife-Cook & Franks, 2019).
(posted on Sept. 3, 2026)
AquaReach project
AQUAREACH focuses on two key Mediterranean aquaculture species: Gilthead seabream and European seabass. 🐟
These species are farmed throughout Europe using a variety of production methods and present different biological and behavioural needs.
By studying both species across their entire life cycle and production stages, AQUAREACH aims to develop environmental enrichment strategies tailored to their specific welfare requirements.
(posted on Aug. 31, 2026)
Well4Catch is working to transform how fish welfare is addressed in wild capture fisheries.
The project focuses on advancing welfare practices in small-scale fisheries, including purse seines, bottom-set nets and longlines, while developing improved handling, stunning and killing methods.
Beyond innovation at sea, Well4Catch is also integrating fish welfare into the FishSource database, ensuring welfare is considered alongside sustainability when assessing fisheries.
Through research, stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing, the project aims to create practical tools with long-term impact for the seafood sector.
(posted on Aug. 27, 2026)
🐟 Bridging science and practice for better fish welfare.
We are pleased to support Community Catch by providing expertise and assistance on fish welfare within its work with small-scale fisheries.
By bringing scientific knowledge into practical fisheries contexts, we contribute to more informed approaches to fish welfare across different stages of the fishing process — from capture and handling to killing and release.
> Evidence-based approaches are an important part of building better practices for fish and fisheries alike.
(posted on Aug. 25, 2026)
