Comparison of the swimming performance of farmed and wild gilthead sea bream, Sparus aurata

Farmed gilthead sea bream, Sparus aurata, frequently escape from the sea cages and interact with wild populations. The impact of these interactions on the wild populations will depend, in part, on differences in performance of the bream. This study compared the swimming performance of the wild and farmed fish in a current channel. The absolute critical swimming speed (Ucrit) increased with increasing size while the relative Ucrit decreased. Even at the same length there were noticeable performance differences between the individuals. The wild sea bream have significantly higher (P<0.05) absolute Ucrit performance (0.86±0.01 m s−1) than the farmed fish (0.79±0.01 m s−1) and significantly higher (P<0.05) relative Ucrit performance (4.52±0.05 BL s−1) than the farmed fish (4.21±0.05 BL s−1). The present study suggests that cultured sea bream may not have the ability to compete with wild sea bream in native seawaters.