Innovative salmon lice study about to start

The Norwegian research organisation SINTEF Ocean will lead a project to assess to what extent this approach could work in practice.

The company Blue Lice AS  has developed and patented technology (pictured) that catches lice larvae before they reach the fish using light signals and pumps.

The system will now be installed at SINTEF ACE’s aquaculture facility in Norway.

The technology uses specific light signals to attract free-swimming louse larvae, which are then sucked in using a pump and collected in a filter. The system is mounted on the facility’s frame mooring with sufficient distance to the cages so that it does not affect the fish or daily operations.

Andreas Hagemann, Project Manager in SINTEF Ocean, says the transition from a treatment-based to a preventive strategy for combating can have significant, positive effects on fish welfare in the marine phase and contribute to reducing treatment-induced mortality.

“However, it is challenging to document new preventive methods against lice infestation in full-scale field trials,” he adds.

“This is due to large seasonal and annual variations in louse pressure, and different hydrodynamic conditions between cages and locations which make direct comparison of data difficult.”

The General Manager of Blue Lice, Karoline Sjødal Olsen said: “With solid research-based documentation from the project, we can finally document the positive effect we have seen through our results since 2020.

“Through the Lice trap project, the researchers will document and quantify the effect of Blue Lice’s trap technology as a preventative measure against lice.”

Goals within the project include documenting and comparing the effect through testing and follow-up of the technology in field trials through an entire production cycle at sea using various methods that include mathematical lice models, weekly lice counts, real-time monitoring of lice caught by the system and quantitative analyses of lice DNA from the system’s filter stations.

Olsen said: “Since in this project we will carry out experiments where the equipment is switched on and off, we will have a good basis for being able to quantify the effect of the lice traps.”