Aquaculture production in the United States has historically been constrained by competition for limited water resources and strict regulations on pollution discharge. As a viable and sustainable means of expanding domestic aquaculture production, land-based closed containment operations utilizing water recirculation aquaculture system (RAS) technologies offer numerous benefits, including: enhanced biosecurity, a high degree of control over the fish rearing environment, technologies to effectively capture wastes in order to reduce environmental impact, and flexibility in site selection for proximity to markets and/or low power rates. There are at least a dozen commercial ventures around the world producing food-size salmon in such facilities, and there is increasing land-based production in the planning stage in the Great Lakes region. At this critical juncture in the growing land-based salmon industry, scientific research and development to support this sector will facilitate domestic agricultural economic contribution, job growth, and food security.
The ability to effectively control saprolegniasis at vulnerable fish life-stages would be a critical advancement for the Atlantic salmon industry, particularly for facilities utilizing freshwater and furthermore for those that include plant production, for which plant health would also need to be considered when applying treatment (e.g., salt, a typical therapeutant, could not be used to control saprolegniasis in an aquaponics facility). We propose to examine a regimen of high and low dosages of both hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid as Atlantic salmon are reared at an early, low immunocompetence life-stage (5g-20g), and secondly following photoperiod manipulation to induce smoltification (a highly stressful physiological process that nonetheless, when induced, provides growth performance benefits for salmon raised entirely in freshwater). We will conduct these investigations in facilities with both hard and soft water, to determine any differences in treatment efficacy under these conditions
At the time of the abstract submission deadline , data collection and processing for these research trials was still underway. Complete results will be available at the conference.