Poor skeletal health poses a risk to fish welfare and performance, particularly in physically demanding offshore and high energy farming environments, where the finfish aquaculture industry are actively planning to expand. For fish to survive and thrive in these environments they require robust skeletons, which are resistant to deformities and injuries. The New Zealand Chinook salmon (locally known as King salmon) aquaculture industry has been historically impacted by spinal deformities and only recently by intermuscular (pin) bone abnormalities in their population. Our project will characterise this issue in order to understand time of occurrence, possible cause and propose mitigation strategies. Understanding the influence of production strategies and husbandry is crucial to alleviating the pin bone issue. Additionally, we will assess the potential for sustained swimming to influence pin bone strength and determine the strength of association between pin bone strength and development, with spinal curvature and skeletal health in general. It is very plausible that the underlying mechanism resulting in pin bone abnormalities is likely compromising skeletal health more broadly. Therefore, understanding and characterising pin bone development, and the onset of any malformation may identify mitigations which could improve overall skeletal health and dramatically improve the welfare outcomes of farmed King salmon. Additionally, better understanding pin bone development in salmon, may facilitate improvements in pin bone removal at processing which is a significant challenge faced by salmon producers.

This September, Bri headed to Spain to present at the Aquaculture Europe 2025 conference in Valencia, presenting her research and attending the site visits, including the AVRAMAR sea pens and the Aquaculture Institute “Torre de la Sal” (IATS), a Public Research Centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

She then headed to Belgium to Ghent University’s Department of Biology, where she met her external supervisor, Professor P. Eckhard Witten and his wife, Professor Ann Huysseune, both of whom have extensive expertise in the evolution and development of skeletal tissues and fish biology. Bri had the privilege of working with Eckhard for the week analysing/imaging my whole-mount stained juvenile salmon and histology slides, utilising the state-of-the-art microscopes available in their lab.

“I’m so grateful to be a Blue Economy student and to have such amazing, supportive supervisors, enabling me to have experiences such as these that help me grow in my career and as a person.” 

Published articles

The problems with pin bones: Intermuscular bone development and function in salmonids and their implications for aquaculture