The fish were netted from the cage and transferred to a 1000 l container containing SW. The container was repeatedly brought ashore with 10–15 fish at the time. The fish were divided into three oxygenated tanks on a truck. The tanks were filled with fresh SW just before loading of fish. The transport time to our laboratory was about 2.5 h at a fish density of about 66 kg m3. At arrival, the stagnant transport waters were heavily oxygen-supersaturated at 150–272% saturation; the SW temperature was 6.8–7.1 C, and the pH ranged from 6.5 to 6.9. The low pH values were caused by accumulation of carbon dioxide, estimated to be in the range 20–100 mg l1 by comparison with similar data given by Erikson (2008). The fish were then transferred batchwise to two 4000 l holding tanks in our laboratory. The flowrate of the sand-filtered SW pumped from 80 m depth was 5 m3 h1, and the resulting fish density was about 47 kg m3 in both tanks. The water was constantly aerated through a diffuser (Point Four Systems Inc., Richmond, Canada). To recover from transport stress, the fish were kept in the tanks for 6 days without feeding before they were slaughtered. Oxygen saturation, acidity and temperature in the holding tanks ranged from 78% to 92%, pH 7.8–8.0, and 7.6– 7.9 C, respectively. Fifty-eight fish were assigned for the present experiment.