Wrasse project gets underway
Initiated by the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), the new project has the potential to increase productivity on salmon farms and reduce the use of medicines in the industry. With the project agreement in place, the project team can set about taking validated lab research through to full application in the commercial environment.
The 42-month project will be based at the Marine Environmental Research Laboratory at Machrihanish on the Kintyre peninsula, on Scotland’s west coast. It will focus on the production, husbandry and deployment of farmed wrasse.
Given the importance of the project to the UK salmon industry, the project will operate under the principle of open knowledge exchange.
The project work has been organised around four work packages, each with a set of specific R&D objectives:
1, Broodstock management, egg and larvae productivity. A series of studies to investigate the reproductive physiology, behaviour and performance of ballan wrasse broodstock, aimed at developing new commercial protocols to enhance egg productivity and quality.
2. Larvae/juvenile nutritional requirement and growth potential. This work package will aim to refine hatchery protocols for live feed management, weaning and on-growing to maximise the robustness of fish produced and growth performance.
3. Health management of cleaner fish. This will include the development of tools to monitor immune response in ballan wrasse and improve disease resistance.
4. Conditioning and optimisation of cleaner fish welfare in commercial cages. This will include building understanding of optimal timing of deployment and stock ratios, and the validation of practical on-farm health and welfare indicators.
The SAIC has awarded grant funding of £831,530 to the project and leveraged contributions worth £3.01 million from Marine Harvest (Scotland), Scottish Sea Farms, BioMar, and the University of Stirling.
Project outcomes will include commercial protocols, research tools and a new knowledge of the biology of the ballan wrasse. This will permit production of a handbook that individual farmers in Scotland – including SMEs – can use as a beginning-to-end guide on the breeding and husbandry of farmed wrasse.
Heather Jones, CEO of the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre, said: “The Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre’s role is to bring industry and academia together to help grow the industry sustainably through innovation. This project exactly fits that bill; sea lice control heads SAIC’s list of Priority Innovation Areas. Our grant funding has galvanised an industry-academic collaboration that not only leverages substantial investment, but will feed into Scottish economic growth.”
Steve Bracken, Business Support Manager at Marine Harvest (Scotland) Ltd, added: “The deployment of wrasse as a means to control sea lice should increase the availability of farm sites, reduce medication costs and increase production efficiency. All parts of the industry – from large companies such as ourselves, to SMEs - will see benefits from this, and the already-excellent reputation of Scottish salmon will be enhanced.”
And the academic lead on the project team, Professor Hervé Migaud, Professor in Fish Physiology and Director of Research at Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, commented: “The Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre’s support and funding will enable us to extend this project from proof of concept to the commercial environment. The impact of the research will be considerable in both scientific and economic terms. In addition, PhD and Masters students at the Institute of Aquaculture have the opportunity to gain research expertise in one of the aquaculture industry’s most pressing issues.”
