The 3R principles and the RETERO project:

The RETERO project (Reduction of live fish testing through science and technology) consists of an interdisciplinary consortium of researchers in computer science, biology, civil, environmental, mechanical and electrical engineering from five partner institutes and companies in Germany and one external partner from Estonia. To achieve the project goals, the consortium relies entirely on the 3Rs principle, which was introduced by Russel & Burch in 1958 [9]. In the concept, the three R's stand for replacement of animals, e.g. by substitute models or new methods, reduction of the number of animals used in the studies, e.g. by developing more advanced methods to obtain improved data and data quality from each animal used and refinement of the methods to reduce animal suffering to an absolutely necessary level. The project addresses all three principles with a variety of methods and sensor systems. In the development process, the work is based on three pillars: (1) basic research in ethohydraulics to gain insights into fish behavior in artificial hydraulic environments, and on collisions during passage to develop newly better adapted sensors, and (2) experimental surrogate methods, such as non-invasive dorsal fin biologgers (backpack sensors) or active probes (robotic fish), and (3) numerical surrogate methods, such as probabilistic methods that predict fish behavior by analyzing the flow field and mechanistic approaches that integrate behavior via AI methods. The contributions of the consortium are further described here: [more]