Promising start for English lumpsuckers
Part of the Native Marine Centre (NMC), which is managed by Mike Webb, the first fish were transferred from the hatchery to the new nursery in mid-June and have shown remarkable progress since.
“The fish are motoring on and can put on a quarter, a third, or even half their own body weights in a week,” Mike enthuses, “and some of them are already 23g.”
“It’s a question of giving them enough space and enough feed. There have been a few issues with the feeds, although they’ll eat anything we found that one of the main brands’ feeds made the RAS system very dirty – possibly something to do with the high fat content.”
Mike also reports that the lumpsuckers are thriving health-wise.
“We’ve got a proper sledgehammer of a UV filter,” he explains, “and I think it helps that we have workers from with both aquarium and fish farming experience. We keep the tanks immaculate, which keeps bacterial issues at a minimum”.
The next batch of 25,000 fish are, Mike says, due to be delivered to Marine Harvest salmon cages in August, and the NMC’s first batch of 13,000, which were sent to Scotland in 2014, appear to be making good inroads, with only one of the pens with lumpsuckers requiring a single “precautionary” louse treatment in the year to date.
“It’s great that the project is actually working and is not just green PR,” Mike reflects.
