Different kinds of defects are observed on farmed fish, and while a lot of research has concentrated on skeletal abnormalities, little is known on scale anomalies. In this paper, a survey for lateral line shape anomalies and disoriented scale patterns was carried out in a common garden experiment involving crosses of 5 different wild populations of European seabass, in order to find if any correlation exists between lateral line shape anomalies, disoriented scale patterns and genetic origin.