Significantly fewer treatments needed at farms with lice lasers

The article was recently published online in the journal Aquaculture and, according to the company, demonstrates that locations that rely on lasers to combat sea lice significantly reduce the need for reactive delousing. The study is peer-reviewed and can be read in its entirety here. 

Documented effect all along the coast 

"We are very pleased to have presented a solid piece of documentation that has been requested by many, especially in the academic community. The work is based on a large data base from the industry and from Stingray's technology, which is in use along the entire Norwegian coast," says Martin Worm, head of research at Stingray Research. 

He further explains that the survey confirms what he says users of the technology have experienced in practice.

"Locations that use laser delousing have a significantly lower need for other types of treatment than locations without."

Half as many treatments

He says this, in short, means that laser locations on average only need half as many delousing treatments. 

"This is an important step in the right direction and very relevant for the entire industry, because there is no doubt that non-medicinal delousing in particular is one of the main causes of reduced welfare and increased mortality in salmon. Optical delousing thus provides both better fish welfare and reduced operating costs," says John Harald Pettersen at Stingray. 

The work is the result of close collaboration between Stingray researchers and Professor Jan Bulla from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bergen, who has extensive experience in applied statistics and special expertise in time series analysis.