Sea lice Archives - Saving Seafood

Skin cell discovery could help Atlantic salmon fend off sea lice

August 16, 2024 — Scientists at the Institute of Aquaculture are central to a study that could hold the key to improving Atlantic salmon’s resistance to sea lice. The parasites—which feed on the fish’s skin and fins, causing open wounds that can lead to infection—reduce the market value of farmed fish and can have knock-on impacts on wild salmon populations.

Various treatments have been developed to tackle sea lice infestations in Atlantic salmon aquaculture—which costs the industry more than £700m a year—but these are often costly and ineffective. They can also be damaging to the environment and negatively affect animal welfare.

The new study reveals insights into how coho salmon—a cousin of Atlantic salmon—fight off the parasites, and it could pave the way for new genetic approaches. The findings are published in the journal BMC Biology.

Findings show a type of skin cell—known as keratinocyte—plays a key role in triggering localized swelling that helps coho salmon kill and remove sea lice.

Read the full article at phys.org

Sea lice impact from salmon farms on wild salmon are overestimated: study

August 16, 2024 — A study, published in Reviews in Aquaculture journal, has identified that the effects of sea lice from salmon farms on wild Atlantic salmon have been overestimated.

The study reviewed the Norwegian regulatory management of the salmon farming sector and concluded that sea lice infections on farms are not associated with a measurable impact on wild salmon. Sea lice are marine parasites naturally occurring in the ocean and have co-existed with wild salmon for millions of years. Farm-raised salmon enter the ocean free of sea lice, a press release from B.C. Salmon Farmers Association states.

“This is an important finding, as it aligns with the research and data we are seeing on sea lice in Canada,” said Simon Jones, research scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and co-author of the published review. “The highly variable relationship between lice levels on wild salmon and salmon aquaculture in B.C. indicates the need for a greater understanding of all factors affecting the survival of wild salmon.”

Read the full article at Aquaculture North America

Salmon’s Getting More Expensive. Blame Bloodsucking Sea Lice.

July 23, 2024 — Health-conscious consumers who covet its brain-enriching Omega-3 have helped make salmon one of the fastest-growing food sources on the planet. Victoria Beckham told The Wall Street Journal last year she considers it a dietary staple. She’s not alone. In America, salmon is the second-most popular seafood after shrimp.

The fish frenzy has driven prices higher and spawned new billionaires, such as Gustav Magnar Witzøe, a 31-year-old Norwegian heir to a salmon fortune and a fashion model who made a splash at this year’s Met Gala in a salmon-colored Versace cape.

Norway’s fjords and coasts are the farmed fish’s top habitat, with around 500 million salmon swimming in the chilly waters—a ratio of roughly 90 Norwegian salmon to every Norwegian human.

Atlantic salmon farming, introduced as overfishing and river pollution shrank the wild salmon population, increased 74 times from 1985 to 2022. Salmon are bred in tanks on land, then moved into the ocean, where they swim in giant ring-shaped nets until they’re ready for human consumption.

But these days, the industry is swimming upstream.

Read the full article at Wall Street Journal

ASC’s updated salmon standard raises sea lice controversy

September 12, 2022 — The Aquaculture Stewardship Council has released an updated version of its salmon standard with a new approach to sea lice monitoring that environmental groups have criticized.

ASC released version 1.4 of its salmon standard on 5 September, following a science-based review process. The new edition of the standard has a specific scope on sea lice management, with the aim of establishing more robustness in sea lice sampling and monitoring and the requirement that salmon farmers take immediate action to remediate sea lice problems if they pass certain thresholds, ASC said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

New tool to improve ‘cleaner fish’ welfare in salmon farming

July 30, 2021 — Researchers at the University of Stirling have developed a new tool that fish farmers can use to improve the welfare of lumpfish—a species crucial to tackling the problem of sea lice in salmon.

Lumpfish are increasingly being used by the salmon industry as a ‘cleaner fish’ to remove parasitic sea lice, which cost the Scottish salmon industry alone an estimated £40m per year.

Because they are a relatively new fish to aquaculture, researchers are still establishing the optimum conditions for lumpfish welfare.

In a new study, a team led by Dr. Sonia Rey Planellas at the University of Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture has established the correlation between lumpfish growth weights and welfare, and turned it into a tool farmers can use to assess the health of the fish and take remedial action if required.

Dr. Rey Planellas says that “at the moment, in the UK we use Operational Welfare Indicators (OWIs) for fish welfare, but lumpfish are a different shape to many other fish, so it’s about identifying the best indicators for each species.”

“Fin damage is typically the indicator that is used, but in this study we found a more useful indicator was the correlation between growth weight relative to size and welfare.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

The sticky problem of sea lice – and what’s being done to stop them

September 30, 2019 — Since its inception in the 1970s, the global salmon farming industry has struggled to manage the severe economic, animal welfare, and ecological impacts of sea lice infestation, which are preventing salmon farming from reaching its true potential. The economic impact has been estimated at between USD 400 to USD 600 million (EUR 366 million to EUR 549 million) per year.

Sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis and members of the Caligus genus), settle on their host as free-swimming larvae, attaching firmly to and feeding from the salmon. They cause physical damage and stress in the fish, and adversely affecting growth and performance. Severe infestations can lead to secondary infections and mass mortalities.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Benchmark says salmon industry needs multiple tools for sea lice, no ‘silver bullet’

December 14, 2018 — UK aquaculture biotechnology company Benchmark is working on a series of tools to combat the salmon industry’s growing sea lice problem, said CEO Malcolm Pye.

No single solution will work in isolation, he said, in an interview with Undercurrent News.

There are some signs that Norwegian salmon farmers are beginning to manage a sea lice problem that escalated this year, fisheries minister Harald Nesvik said last month. Sea lice levels have dropped on a combination of cold weather and methods that farmers are using, including delousing baths, cleaner-fish that feed off sea lice and even laser treatment.

Sea lice costs the Norwegian industry more than NOK 4.5 billion ($524.7 million) a year without even taking into the account reduced harvest weights, according to Norwegian seafood research institute Nofima. In a particularly bad year for Norway, farmers harvested fish below an average of 5 kilograms, compared with Chile that harvested an average of 5.5 kilograms. Larger fish command a premium in some markets such as China and Russia.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Here’s how $1.4M in NOAA grants will be used to help Maine’s fishing industry

October 25, 2018 — Sea lice infestation costs the salmon aquaculture industry an estimated at $15 million annually in the United States and $740 million globally — and remains the greatest barrier to continuing and expanding salmon aquaculture in the oceans.

That’s the industry context underscoring the relevance of the $725,365 grant awarded to a University of Maine team to study potential new treatments for sea lice infestation.

The grant is one of two to UMaine that were announced recently by National Sea Grant College, a program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both projects are expected to further advance the development of a sustainable marine and coastal aquaculture industry in the United States, according to a NOAA news release.

Heather Hamlin, Deborah Bouchard and Ian Bricknell of UMaine’s Aquaculture Research Institute will research an integrated approach to addressing sea lice control in the commercial culture of Atlantic salmon in sea pens. The project will address gaps in knowledge of sea lice biology and control methods, such as integrated pest management, and new, ecologically sensitive chemical compounds and their effects on nontarget species, such as lobsters.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

The gross reason your salmon is about to get (even more) expensive.

January 25, 2017 — The bad news is you may have to cut back on how much salmon you eat. The good news is when you find out the gross reason why, you might not have much of an appetite anyway.

Salmon farms in Norway and Scotland, two of the world’s largest exporters, have been decimated by sea lice, a parasite that has feasted on the blood and skin of salmon for millennia. Farther south in Chile, a toxic algae bloom has killed enough of the fish to fill several Olympic swimming pools.

As the salmon die by the millions, it’s causing a supply-and-demand ripple effect that’s reaching deep into American wallets.

Worldwide farmed salmon production fell by 8.7 percent in a year, according to the Financial Times. And the Nasdaq Salmon Index showed a nearly 15 percent jump in salmon prices in the last three months.

In the near future, it only promises to get worse. And the dying fish and rising prices could fan the debate about whether growing salmon in giant ocean farms is sustainable.

For fans of salmon nigiri or frozen fillets plucked from supermarket freezers for quick, heart-healthy protein, expect salmon portions to shrink — and prices to grow, experts say.

Read the full story at the Washington Post