As part of FWI's Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture (ARA) program, we collect data from the farms we work with in India to understand the conditions for these fishes and help improve their welfare. During farm visits, we assess water quality and recommend corrective actions to prevent or reduce suffering. With this approach, we estimate to have improved the lives of 2.2 million fishes to date.
The ARA program has continually evolved over the past three years as we navigate the emerging field of Indian major carp welfare. This year, we introduced significant programmatic changes, including adjusted visit frequencies and a more accurate dissolved oxygen (DO) measurement system.
The updated dataset is anonymized and now includes the latest data collected between July 30, 2023, and October 31, 2024, in addition to the data collected since the program’s inception in June 2021. Here are some key figures about the data we’ve collected:
Number of farms monitored: 227
Note: This is a cumulative number and not all of these are in the ARA anymore.
Total measurements taken: 7,660
Timeline of measurements: July 2021 - October 2024
Why We Publish Our Data
We’re publishing this data to align with our core values of transparency and accountability. We want everyone, both within our organization and beyond, to have access to our data and the ability to analyze it if they wish.
Some Disclaimers
Despite our extensive efforts in quality control and error correction, we would like to acknowledge the following disclaimers:
There are still potential sources of error in this data, including equipment calibration issues and human error during sample collection. We have also improved our data collection methods over time and thus older measurements are likely less accurate than the ones after May this year.
The fish farms we work with are complex, living ecosystems, and it is challenging to draw broad conclusions from limited samples (e.g., low oxygen in one location does not necessarily represent conditions across the entire farm).
The measures we currently use, such as water quality metrics, are proxies for fish welfare and are inherently imperfect.
We plan to continue to publish this data annually. If you have questions, or comments, or would like to conduct any analysis, we encourage you to reach out.
For context, see our announcement regarding last year’s data publication.
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