New tool will benchmark Mediterranean aquaculture performance

System will compare performance of sea bass and sea bream producers within Mediterranean basin.

PerformFISH, a European Union-funded Horizon 2020 project, announced the development of an innovative, industry-led tool to measure sea bass and sea bream aquaculture performance in the Mediterranean region.

According to the announcement, contributed by AquaTT in Ireland, for the first time ever, sea bass and sea bream producers will have access to an accurate and standardized system, allowing them to benchmark the efficiency of their own production, to define realistic targets according to peak performances and to identify inefficiencies in their production cycles.

This system will also compare the performance of the companies within Mediterranean local areas as well as at a regional level, the announcement said. Companies will be able to rank their performance relative to the performance of other producers in the sector. The tool was developed based on the principal of anonymity and will allow producers to measure the efficiency of their own production practices.

PerformFISH said the tool is based on 55 key performance indicators due to be adopted by the industry that will serve to estimate the technical efficiency of companies, including losses and diseases, feed efficiency, fish growth and the use of chemicals, as well as environmental and economic performance and fish welfare.

“We have completed a thorough consultation process with the industry,” said Giovanna Marino from the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection & Research, which contributed to the project. “Our aim was to build a system that reflects the differences in production systems and technologies used by industry, the different industrial scales of the companies participating and the different climate conditions at aquaculture sites across the Mediterranean.”

The system is currently being tested by 33 companies operating in Spain, Italy, Greece, France and Croatia and includes hatcheries as well as land-based and sea-based growout facilities. These companies represent the 70% of sea bass and sea bream producers in Europe. The real-time data provided by the companies, from past seasons and new production cycles, will form a baseline that will be used to establish quantitative production targets in order to evaluate the success of PerformFISH interventions on performance and sector sustainability, the announcement said.

By the end of the project, this tool could be made available to all sea bass and sea bream producers across the Mediterranean to help improve the competitiveness and efficiency of the industry in the region overall. For the wider Mediterranean aquaculture industry, this advance will allow producers to improve their environmental footprint as well as the welfare levels of their stock, which will help improve consumer perception of sea bass and sea bream aquaculture products, according to the announcement.

More information on the project is available on the project’s website at www.performfish.eu.

The PerformFISH consortium of 28 partners represents leading organizations in their respective fields of work from 10 different European countries. The project is coordinated by the University of Thessaly in Greece. AquaTT is the project dissemination partner.