Volume 18 Issue 3 May/June 2017
RECIRC
DIVERSIFY Aerial view of Dalrymple facility.
CARBON COPY RAS Three years ago, Marine Harvest Canada began expanding two of its BC hatcheries by building scaled-up versions of its best performing RAS, growing more fish using less freshwater. he Canadian division of the world’s largest salmon producer will soon have spent more than $40 million to build seven recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) at its land-based freshwater hatcheries near Sayward, British Columbia in western Canada. Three years ago, Marine Harvest Canada started expanding the Sayward hatcheries by building carbon copies and scaled-up versions of its best performing RAS. Two smaller RAS will supply water to 6m tanks for first feeders. Five larger RAS will have 14m tanks for raising smolts. In total, the new systems will provide 9000 cubic metres of rearing space, allowing Marine Harvest Canada to become one of the largest producers of salmon smolts in North America.
T
BEAUTY IN SIMPLICITY
Marine Harvest Canada’s Director of Freshwater Operations, Dean Guest, says the beauty of the system lies in its simplicity. It follows a design where 100% of water passes through 100% of the treatment system. The system was created by Marine Harvest staff, and as Dean boasts, it contains very few bells and whistles. “It was surprising that a simple system that was inexpensive to build uses less energy than competing systems. We designed the system to be very simple and compact and the only automation is the oxygen system and the drum filter,” Dean says. The design involved input from all our hatchery staff, fish health, and health and safety departments.
continued on page 8
SHELLFISH SPOTLIGHT
Our 6 page section starts on page 16
Washington oyster grower builds Hawaiian solution to OA When ocean acidification clobbered seed production at shellfish hatcheries on the west coast of North America a Washington-based oyster producer discovered a solution in the Hawaiian Islands. BY TOM WALKER
“When I first started growing oysters in Willapa Bay in 1979, we could put out shells and collect seed,” recalls Dave Nisbet, owner of Goose Point Oyster Company. “That’s the way I built up my business.” “Over the years we moved into using hatchery seed in order have a more stable supply and we began to notice that the natural sets were declining,” Nisbet says. Larval rearing room at Hawaiian Shellfish hatchery.
continued on page 18
Wreckfish experiments gain traction
Strip spawning of wreckfish at HCMR, Greece.
sing data from their experiments, several research teams in Spain and Greece are focusing on key areas for improving the wreckfish breeders’ feeding regimen to ensure better larval survival. The European project DIVERSIFY included experiments on optimal larval rearing of wreckfish, Polyprion americanus, as well as the development of a general culture protocol that ensures high larval survival. DIVERSIFY identified wreckfish from among the number of new/emerging finfish species as one with a great potential for expansion of the EU aquaculture industry. The research teams worked under different conditions, in different facilities, and with different broodstock. The first experiments allowed wreckfish larvae to survive until 24 days post-hatch. They also provided growth data and valuable information on larval ontogeny. These were discussed in the study, First experiences of wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) larval husbandry in NW Atlantic and East Mediterranean, by B. ÁlvarezBlázquez et al. It was presented at Aquaculture Europe 2016, held last September in Scotland. At the Hellenic Center for Marine Research in Greece larvae from two spawns were reared in a
U
continued on page 15
Publications Mail Agreement #40027115 Registration #9920 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO 4623 William Head Rd. Victoria BC V9C 3Y7 email: peter@capamara.com