Managing salmon louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis outbreaks is a crucial part of salmon aquaculture in sea cages. Treatment management strategies can be optimized with the aid of salmon-louse population dynamic models. The full title of the article is "Estimation of external infection pressure and salmon-louse population growth rate in Faroese salmon farms."
Tróndur J. Kragesteen, PhD and researcher at Fiskaaling, has published his latest findings in the Inter-Research Science journal.
These models, however, need to be calibrated and validated with biologically meaningful parameters. Based on a time-series of lice data, two essential model parameters were estimated: the external infection pressure and the salmon-louse population growth rate for each active salmon farm site in the period 2011 to 2018 in the Faroe Islands.
External infection pressure was found to vary between farm sites. Further, external infection was significantly correlated with the total number of gravid lice in the Faroese farm network. Salmon-louse population growth rates were found to vary between farm sites.
These model parameter estimates are crucial in developing a salmon-louse population dynamic model for the Faroe Islands, and the method to estimate these parameters may be applicable in other aquaculture regions.
Read the article here in full length.
The co-authors are Knud Simonsen, André W. Visser and Ken H. Andersen.
