Sedatives are chemicals or physical agents that—with increasing treatment concentration and duration—calm an animal and cause successive loss of mobility, equilibrium, consciousness, and reflex action. Fisheries professionals routinely sedate fish for a variety of purposes, including collection of samples or morphometric data, fish health evaluations, implantation of tags, induced spawning, and transport. Sedating fish before handling can minimize stress and physical injury to the fish and help protect the handler. Ideally, a fish sedative is safe, effective, easy to administer, and inexpensive. In addition, it is desirable that the sedative have no withdrawal period so that treated fish may be released into the wild immediately after treatment.
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