Volume 19 Issue 1 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
RECOVERY
RESEARCH
researchers Partners in a Wild Notion Norwegian launch hatchery water A novel partnership in fisheries conservation aims to preserve endangered Atlantic salmon in the Bay of Fundy
quality study
BY DEBORAH IRVINE ANDERSON
he Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) were declared endangered in 2003. Of the more than 40 rivers that were home to the species, mostly have none now. But there is good news. The Fundy Salmon Recovery project is a world’s first. It’s innovation is simple, yet effective. The recovery program collects juvenile salmon from the Upper Salmon River in New Brunswick’s Fundy National Park after they’ve hatched in the wild. The parr overwinter in a hatchery and in the spring they are moved to an ocean environment where they are raised to maturity in a marine farm run by Cooke Aquaculture that is dedicated to growing wild Atlantic salmon. When mature, they are brought back to the Upper Salmon and Petitcodiac Rivers to spawn. Compared to many other conservation efforts, researchers at the Fundy Salmon Recovery Project
Research effort aims to develop early warning system for dangerous bacteria
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BY MATT JONES
A helicopter delivers adult salmon to team members of the Fundy Salmon Recovery Project at Upper Salmon River in Fundy National Park.
are seeing results. And it’s due in large part to a wide variety of stakeholders working together: Parks Canada, Cooke Aquaculture, the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association, the Province of New Brunswick, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the University of New Brunswick,
he Norwegian research organization SINTEF has launched a multi-year research effort, studying water quality within systems at salmon hatcheries. Funded by the Norwegian Seafood Research Fund and various industry partners, researchers hope that their analysis will help develop useful techniques to better stave off issues related to potentially dangerous bacteria.
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RECIRC
In RAS, off-flavour is off-putting A veteran RAS-man urges producers to clean up their act, for themselves and for the good of the sector BY JUSTIN HENRY
t Northern Divine Aquafarms, we first used RAS to grow salmon smolts in1998. This was before the term “RAS” was coined and we just called it “recirc”. We soon realized that this technology allowed us to produce smolts six months earlier and three times as big when compared to our flowthrough system. I remember thinking “why would you grow fish in anything else?” Lots of people had the same idea which led some to start growing fish right through to harvest in RAS.
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E A R LY D AY S , E A R LY C H A L L E N G E S
It was 17 years ago that we started to harvest our first RAS-grown sturgeon for meat. Today, the sturgeon, caviar and coho salmon grown at Northern Divine have the cleanest taste possible
at harvest; however, that is not how it started 17 years ago. Farmers growing fish such as catfish in ponds have been battling this problem for years, though many others who grow fish in net pens or flow-through systems have, for the most part, not historically encountered this challenge. When RAS came along there were initially no problems with off-flavour since most of the production was for smolts which no one was eating. As farmers realized the benefits of growing fish in RAS, they started to experiment with growing several species to market size. Unfortunately, in many instances, the market knew there was a problem before the farmer. One of our first harvests of sturgeon for meat went to a banquet at an aquaculture conference 15 years ago. Various types of seafood were served at Atlantic salmon in a conditioning different stations throughout the venue. tank at the Freshwater Institute. The first sturgeon that came out was Filters contain no media on which delicious; this was the first time that bacteria can accumulate. many people had ever tried sturgeon. An hour or so later, they refreshed the continued on page 37
SINTEF researchers Kari Attramadal (left) and Stine W. Dahle take water samples for DNA extraction of the microbial community composition.
Biologist and Researcher for the study, Kari Attramadal, says that studies into these types of issues have previously only been conducted after fish are already showing signs of illness. As such, there is very little information about the microbial environment fish are raised in, especially under normal conditions. “We wanted to have a project where we could measure for a long time and get all the data to know what the normal variation is and what the normal continued on page 22 Publications Mail Agreement #PM40065710 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO 80 Valleybrook Dr., Toronto, ON M3B 2S9