Assessing the economic impacts of severe skeletal anomalies in Mediterranean hatcheries culturing seabream and seabass

The economic impact of skeletal anomalies in aquaculture farming is a significant issue for the industry, as deformed fish are frequently discarded because of their low survival rate and a variety of other disadvantages, including increased costs, consumer distrust of aquaculture products, and ethical concerns. The goal of this article is to propose a method for calculating the direct costs of severe skeletal anomalies in typical Mediterranean seabream and seabass aquaculture hatcheries using a deterministic static model programmed in MATLAB that simulates their annual operation. Our findings suggest that larger hatcheries experience higher direct costs associated with severe skeletal anomalies but have better financial stability and significantly higher expected profits. Mean results indicate that the annual economic losses of severe skeletal anomalies for seabream and seabass Mediterranean aquaculture are 22.88 million euros per year for a scenario of low severe skeletal anomalies, 65.34 million euros per year for a scenario of medium severe skeletal anomalies, and 115.98 million euros per year for a scenario of high severe skeletal anomalies. Furthermore, some options for increasing the financial stability of the hatcheries are to increase the sale price of fingerlings, reduce the feed conversion ratio, and reduce the feed unit cost.