Sea lice management is a stressful task for salmon and salmon farmers. Methods to prevent sea louse infestations have some key advantages over other strategies, scientists argues.

With the increasing use of cleaner fish, especially farmed ballan wrasse and lumpfish (and also wild-caught goldsinny wrasse), there is a need for more knowledge on the welfare of these species.

Lumpfish have become an important weapon in the struggle against sea lice. This means that there are large volumes of it in Norwegian aquaculture. Now the task is to find new ways of using the little working fish.

North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF) together with Norwegian Centre of Expertise - Seafood Innovation Cluster and the Norwegian Seafood Research Fund (FHF) presents a historic and unprecedented opportunity to bring key salmon players, researchers and leading experts of the world together to embark on new paths to combat sea lice.

Four Norwegian research institutions, two outside of Norway and several industry partners from technology and the aquaculture industry have now started operations at a centre for innovation in closed-containment systems. The centre, CtrlAQUA, has been given NOK 200 million and eight years to reach its own ambition to make closed-containment systems for salmon up to one kilogram off-the-shelf systems.

CtrlAQUA is a Centre for Research-based Innovation (SFI) that will lay the foundation for the development of closed-containment concepts of the future. With greater control of the production process, it will be possible to reduce problems associated with mortality and sea lice, and to reduce the production time for farmed salmon.