Earlier this week, Sandra Ljósá Østerø and Kirstin Eliasen from Fiskaaling participated in a conference on cleaner fish in Stord, Norway. The conference is held annually for everyone involved in and working with cleaner fish.
Cleaner fish is a collective term for various fish species that feed on sea lice from fish. In the Faroe Islands, we only use lumpfish as cleaner fish.
The conference began with presentations from the Veterinary Research Institute (Veterinærinstituttet) and The Norwegian Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet). The Veterinary Institute presented the annual fish health report, describing the year in terms of fish health and diseases. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority presented the challenges related to the welfare of cleaner fish and what is required to continue using cleaner fish. After that, there were many interesting presentations from industry and research institutions.
Representatives from Fiskaaling gave a presentation on the lumpfish situation in the Faroe Islands. They were invited as part of a Norwegian project aimed at sharing knowledge about cleaner fish within the Nordic countries.
Sandra Ljósá Østerø, a researcher at Fiskaaling, gave a presentation at the conference, where she discussed our experiences with lumpfish in the Faroe Islands. Among other things, she presented the results of lumpfish monitoring that Fiskaaling has conducted on fish farms from 2015 to 2020. Sandra talked about how we started using lumpfish in the Faroe Islands, how many lice they consume, the importance of using them correctly, and the main challenges with lumpfish in the Faroe Islands.
In addition to Fiskaaling, representatives from Mowi and Bakkafrost attended the conference.
