Acronym SeaLCon
Category
Aquaculture
Title Sea lice control: a semiochemical approach to pest control in modern aquaculture Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Erik Selander Coordinator email erik.selander@bioenv.gu.se
Coordinator institution
UGOT - University of Gothenburg (Sweden)
Institutions involved
NA - Not available (Norway) ,
FORMAS - Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Sweden) ,
NA - UniBio AS (Denmark) ,
Start year 2013 End year 2016 Funding (€) € 466,928 Website NA Summary Sea lice are small parasitic copepods, which cling to salmonid fish. Sea lice have benefited from the development of large-scale salmon farms, particularly in Norway, the world's largest producer of farmed salmon. Sea lice cost Norwegians around half a billion (SEK) per year in terms of lost fish in farms. Even more alarming is that sea lice from farms now threaten wild stocks of salmonids. In western Canada sea lice kill up to eighty percent of the salmon that migrate out into the Pacific. For many years salmon farmers fought a losing battle against sea lice. Fish are treated with medication in baths or feed, and cleaner fish wrasses are stocked in the cultures to pick lice from the salmon. The sea louse has become resistant to several of the drugs currently used, and there is a great need for new methods to control outbreaks of sea lice. In this project, we make use of the salmon louse olfactory orientation to lure it into traps. The salmon louse has limited vision and find hosts and mates based on chemo-sensory information. Some of the cues used in host-finding are already known, and we will find out more using modern chemical tools. We will also characterize the sexual pheromones of the sea louse, and combine the different chemo-attractants into efficient baits. Bait efficiency will be evaluated in the lab and in traps deployed in fish farms in cooperation with Norwegian farmers.
To decipher the chemical cues used in mate and host finding in sea lice.
Keywords
Cage aquaculture;
Salmon;
Fish;
Open sea aquaculture;
Parasite;
Marine Region
41
Norwegian Sea (27.IIa)
29
West of Ireland (27.VIIb)
14
Skagerrak, Kattegat (27.IIIa)
3
Marine Region Map
