UK: The project will seek to find a way to incorporate sound-enhanced deworming into fish pumps used on wellboats, service vessels or barges.
A Scottish company, Pulcea, has received million-dollar funding from the UK Seafood Innovation Fund to find a way to incorporate sound-enhanced salmon deworming technology into fish pumps used on wellboats, service vessels or barges. .
Stirling-based Pulcea has spent several years developing the use of acoustic energy to improve the effectiveness of hydrogen peroxide used in canvas-dipping treatments to kill lice and improve gill health in farmed salmon.
The use of acoustic pulses has also been shown to reduce the H2O2 dose required.
Pulcea managing director Ian Armstrong was inspired to start the new project after attending a conference organized by the Global Aquaculture Technical Center in Ålesund, Norway last September.
“The conference was excellent, and they also had a small display area that featured all the major pump manufacturers and their fish welfare specialists. At GATH I discovered that we now have the technology to properly move salmon in a pump,” says Armstrong.
The use of acoustic energy and the predictable progress of the fish through the pump means that a lower than standard dose of H2O2 will be used, and the addition of an enzyme will break down the residual chemical into water and oxygen before it is discharged the treatment water.
Armstrong sees it as a tool that fits well with the trend of using larger centers and stocking larger post-smolts that will spend less time at sea.
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