Novel treatment against salmon lice
1 Purpose
This project aims to document the most effective dosage and exposure time necessary for the novel treatment to successfully remove sealice without any adverse effects to the Atlantic salmon. This builds on information collected by the client during small-scale pilot trials which illustrated that this treatment was effective at immobilizing sealice during in vitro tests, while the same dosage/exposure proved safe to the Atlantic salmon.
2 Distress
The project is not expected to cause significant additional stress beyond the mild discomfort experienced by a portion of the fish resulting from relatively low-level sealice infection.
3 Expected benefit
The industry will benefit from a novel treatment to remove sealice from farmed fish, thus improving overall health and well being of farmed Atlantic salmon. This would in turn result in a reduction in use of established chemical treatments, reducing the likelihood of resistance development.
4 Number of animals
240 Atlantic salmon post-smolts will be used in this study.
5 How to adhere to 3R
The fish will be held in RAS systems prior to treatment and during the sealice infection stage, thus ensuring minimal handling and stress prior to the treatment trials. The project is designed in a way that uses the minimal number of fish during the dose-safety trials, these will be followed by small treatment trials comprising one treatment group and a control group.
This project aims to document the most effective dosage and exposure time necessary for the novel treatment to successfully remove sealice without any adverse effects to the Atlantic salmon. This builds on information collected by the client during small-scale pilot trials which illustrated that this treatment was effective at immobilizing sealice during in vitro tests, while the same dosage/exposure proved safe to the Atlantic salmon.
2 Distress
The project is not expected to cause significant additional stress beyond the mild discomfort experienced by a portion of the fish resulting from relatively low-level sealice infection.
3 Expected benefit
The industry will benefit from a novel treatment to remove sealice from farmed fish, thus improving overall health and well being of farmed Atlantic salmon. This would in turn result in a reduction in use of established chemical treatments, reducing the likelihood of resistance development.
4 Number of animals
240 Atlantic salmon post-smolts will be used in this study.
5 How to adhere to 3R
The fish will be held in RAS systems prior to treatment and during the sealice infection stage, thus ensuring minimal handling and stress prior to the treatment trials. The project is designed in a way that uses the minimal number of fish during the dose-safety trials, these will be followed by small treatment trials comprising one treatment group and a control group.