Anaesthetic and Sedative Techniques for Aquatic Animals. 3rd Edition

Professor Ross began Anaesthetic and Sedative Techniques for Aquatic Animals with a set of course notes developed in 1983 and, later, expanded and heavily referenced his work in a second edition published by Blackwell about 10 yr ago. In this third edition, Lindsay G. Ross—with his wife, Barbara Ross, and daughter, Bryony Ross—has further expanded and updated the material, covering a field that has grown increasingly controversial and challenging within the last decade. It has taken some time—years in fact—for the fish-and-wildlife–management and scientific communities to accept the fact that sedation and anesthesia (American-English spelling will be used in this review) of fish, invertebrates, amphibians, and reptiles is not only humane and good practice, but also desirable, and that some techniques are applicable to larger-scale operations such as hatcheries. On the down side, the resources required for many advances made in aquatic animal anesthesia are not yet widely available, or the procedures are prohibited due to food-safety concerns on food fish, but more on this later. The authors note that this book is the ‘‘only substantial reference work on fish anaesthesia,’’ and although this is perhaps true as stated, it is not the only source of information on the subject, given that several current large works on fish medicine and care contain good chapters on anesthesia. Anaesthetic and Sedative Techniques for Aquatic Animals, however, is substantive, with 15 chapters including the following: ‘‘Defining Stress in Aquatic Animals’’; ‘‘Pain in Aquatic Animals’’; ‘‘The Nature of Anaesthesia, Sedation and Analgesia’’; ‘‘The Features of Anaesthetic Agents’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia and Legislation’’; ‘‘Factors Affecting the Response of Aquatic Ectotherms to Anaesthesia’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Fish I: Inhalation Anaesthesia’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Fish II: Inhalation Anaesthesia Using Gases’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Fish III: Parenteral and Oral Anaesthesia’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Fish IV: Nonchemical Methods’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Aquatic Invertebrates’’; ‘‘Anaesthesia of Amphibians and Reptiles’’; ‘‘Transportation and Anaesthesia’’; and ‘‘Concluding Remarks. ’’ If you have missed all the sound and fury in the last decade or two over whether ‘‘fish feel pain,’’ whether and how they manifest stress, and the effects of pain and stress on fish health, along with numerous other issues, you might wonder about the need for several of the first six or seven chapters. As a veteran and survivor of these controversies, Dr Ross lays a pretty solid base for the fact that fish do indeed feel pain (or at least noxious stimuli that cause avoidance) and that aquatic animal anesthesia and sedation is not just for the weak-at-heart. The authors write: ‘‘Indeed, because these specific receptors (nociceptors) and their axons can be readily identified in invertebrates, they have been widely used as models in neurophysiological research for many years. ’’ Although ‘‘fish feel pain’’ may seem like common sense and is now pretty widely accepted, the citations supporting this were relatively few and old, which I find a disturbing oversight. This is probably an area where newer citations should have been added to bolster classical papers on the subject. On the subject of stress, the following quote seemed somewhat overstated: ‘‘The response to these hormones is fairly consistent and, although their release adapts an animal to respond to an environmental change, there is Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 45(2), 2009, pp. 552–554