Fish as sentinels of aquatic environment: Pertinence and optimisation of sanitary parameters.

Fish are more and more used as proper sentinels of environment and many met hods are now based upon the study of communities, physiological responses a nd metabolic and cellular reactions of fish. Among these methods, the evalu ation of the health condition appears certainly as one of the most pertinen t. Nevertheless, by reason of understanding and financial motives, very few in dicators have been proved to be really pertinent. These indicators are not widely practised and they are exceptionally integrated within biomonitoring programmes : in the reality of to-day, only the parasite Trichodina sp. ha s been validated and could be integrated in the <<fish-index>>. The present paper will first describe the main sanitory parameters and thei r ecological means and, secondly, so far their use is possible and the ways to improve the sanitory tool. The improvement of this tool implies to build up an epidemiological survey network in order to organize and coordinate the specific competencies and t o connect all the available informations.