Scottish salmon farmers are taking a green approach to fighting sea lice, with a new GBP 2 million project that uses wrasse instead of chemicals.
The project will bring thousands of the fish to the salmon pens to serve as “cleaner fish,” cutting down on the sea lice without using more traditional medicinal chemicals.
“This project is fundamentally different from other smaller projects as the scale of what we are investing in could transform sea lice management across the aquaculture industry,” said Jim Gallagher, Managing Director of Scottish Sea Farms.
The fish will be introduced to salmon farms starting in August and September of this year. Farmers are limiting the project just to wild wrasse that can be caught sustainably, but a joint project between Marine Harvest Scotland and Stirling University is working on a wrasse farming project to mass-produce the fish.
“This is an enormous step forward for the aquaculture industry,” said Alan Sutherland, managing director of Marine Harvest Scotland said. “The results we have seen so far are very impressive and a sign of what we can achieve through collaboration.”
