Marine Harvest web published a salmon farming industry handbook dated March 2008.
Marine Harvest states that the document has been produced to give financial analysts, investors and others an insight into the salmon farming industry and Marine Harvest’s view of the most important value drivers.
In overview the document covers:
- global overview on salmon
- salmon biology
- salmon farming
- key inputs
- key global geographies
- processing
- supply and demand
- comparisons with other protein sources
- research and development
At eighty pages filled with explanatory data, tables and images I certainly found it a great introduction to the key issues in the Salmon Industry from a global perspective. It is a valuable contribution to aquaculture knowledge.
Sea lice pose a huge health threat to both wild and farmed fish. Researchers have investigated the efficacy of a treatment for sea lice in wild sea trout.
Sea lice are important exoparasites of fish, both in the wild and in aquaculture.
These tiny crustaceans can lower the fitness of the fish and indirectly cause fatalities due to open lesions that prevent the fish from maintaining its osmotic, or salt/water balance. If infection rates are severe, the parasites can feed on the fish at higher than the growth rate. It follows then that developing stock are more prone to this distressing phenomenon due to their small size.
To investigate means of tackling this disease, wild sea trout were tagged with Passive Integrated Transponder tags (PIT tags). Fish are therefore identifiable and traceable using a tag scanner on recapture of the fish.
There were two groups, one treated with a prophylactic substance designed to control the parasite and the others untreated. The experiment took place in the north-west of Scotland.
It was discovered that the treatment had a significant effect on the condition factor of treated fish. Indices of condition indicated that the fish that received the prophylactic suffered less growth constraints whilst in open sea.
Possible subsequent effects on growth and survival to sexual maturity could have significant implications on stock conservation due to the direct relationship between fecundity and size in the female.
Control of this parasite is important, not only for farmed stocks, but also for wild stocks as farming situations are thought to act as sources of infection for this pest. Further research could well bring about more effective controls and superior management of our natural and farmed fish stocks.
More on this approach to sea lice control is available via this link.
