Lumpfish are now the third-largest farmed fish species in Norway
Norway seafood industry is using a strange tool in the fight against sea lice infestation of salmon farms that led, in 2016, to total losses of around € 300 million to the global fish&seafood industry and a drop of 10% in production.
Sea lice, which have found to be prevalent in the Atlantic salmon farming industries in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and Chile, affect the health, welfare, and quality of farmed fish, and between their possible transferral to wild salmon populations and the deleterious effects of anti-sea lice treatments, can cause harm to the environment, according to Seafood Source magazine.
Now, salmon producers in Norway are using lumpfish as a cohabiting “cleaner fish” and the production figures for lumpfish have ramped up quickly. The number of lumpfish producers in Norway stands at around 40, many of them being start-ups, with commercial production figures reaching rising over 30 million juveniles, up from just a few thousand fish in 2010.
That makes lumpfish the third-largest farmed fish species in Norway with a value of € 2.56 for a vaccinated 50-gram fish.
The boost in cleaner fish production and their expanded use in Norway has resulted in an increased focus on their welfare, and the Norwegian Food Safety Authority has started a dedicated campaign that will improve monitoring over the next year.
The larger Norwegian companies have multiple owners, many of them from the salmon farming industry, who prefer to tie in supply rather than buy on the spot market. Namdal Rensefisk for example, one of the largest lumpfish producers, is owned by salmon farming companies Bjørøya Fiskeoppdrett, Marine Harvest, Midt Norsk Havbruk, Nova Sea, and Emilsen Fisk, and specialist breeding company AquaGen.
AquaGen recently took up the challenge of breeding lumpfish in collaboration with Namdal Rensefisk. According to AquaGen researcher Maren Mommens, the current focus is on improving lumpfish health, durability, and efficiency, since the survival of these fish is essential if they are to effectively control sea lice infection levels on salmon farms.
“We are delighted to have initiated a collaboration with Namdal Rensefisk, which has built a state of the art broodstock unit alongside its lumpfish production facilities. This will play an important part in the new breeding program,” AquaGen CEO Nina Santi declared for the magazine.
After two years of producing lumpfish, Namdal Rensefisk has reached an annual production of 2 million fish.
The trend was adopted even in Wales, where lumpfish producer Ocean Matters has introduced a lumpfish certification label, through which it aims to make consumers more aware of how the industry addresses the biological challenge of sea lice through co-habitation strategies. "We believe that salmon farmers who choose lumpfish over mechanical treatments for salmon delousing should be recognized and celebrated for their commitment to fish welfare and environmental stewardship. This is why we created our certification program to support customers’ efforts to achieve a sustainable future for salmon farming,", mentioned Werner Forster, Ocean Matters Chief Executive. The company is producing over 4 million fish annually in an effort to meet growing demand from the market in the United Kingdom.
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