Assessment of correlations between consumption of non-target prey items and lice cleaning efficiency of lumpfish of different sizes inside Canadian Atlantic salmon production sea cages using morphological and metabarcoding techniques.

Salmon aquaculture loses money when the salmon being farmed are infested by small parasites called “sea lice”. In Newfoundland Atlantic salmon aquaculture farms, the most common type of sea lice is the salmon louse. They can greatly reduce the number of salmon produced and cause health issues for the salmon. To manage the sea lice in cold waters, lumpfish are used because continue to eat sea lice down to 4?C. My primary goal is to see how lumpfish size affects how quickly they reduce the number of adult lice per salmon. I will also update the BOLD mtDNA database so that it includes all species that lumpfish commonly eat. I will collect lumpfish from salmon farms and use DNA barcoding and visual identification of their stomach contents to achieve my goals.

Faculty Supervisor:

Elizabeth Boulding

Student:

Partner:

Cooke Aquaculture Inc (Saint John, NB)

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Agriculture; Manufacturing

University:

University of Guelph

Program: