Eco-friendly fish disease control

In this project we want to test the efficacy of an innovative environmentally friendly and totally biodegradable biological solution (BMX12) that is shown to be effective both against sea lice and antagonistic to bacterial diseases in salmon farming. The solution has demonstrated in previous studies to have no impact on salmon feed and growth in salmon upon exposure to high concentrations. The Solution has also demonstrated to be harmless to aquatic plants and mammals. Fish diseases remain one of the main challenges in the aquaculture industry, causing major annual losses due to higher mortality rates, reduced fish growth and diminished product quality. Treatments for salmon lice are complicated as well as problematic from a fish welfare perspective, and salmon lice are acquiring a high level of resistance to existing medicines. The broader impacts of this research are the reduction of the environmental impact, optimization of fish health in open ocean aquaculture, and thereby aiding the growth in this innovative, exciting and lucrative industry.We are applying to use a total of 720 salmon for running 3 tests with the opportunity to run these test 3 times if necessary. To test the inhabitation of sea lice infection (test 1) and efficacy of this product we will use a quality insured sea lice challenge model developed by Nofima. When the test is finish we will treat the infected fish in the control group with the product to test if the product can be used to also reduce the amount of sea lice (test 2) .By using the control fish for the final reduction test we reduce the amount to fish needed for testing this product. To test the efficacy of this product to bacterial infection (test 3) we want to use one of the quality insured bacterial bath challenge models we have in Nofima. Each trial will last between 4-6 weeks.