AQUABOUNTY'S AQUADVANTAGE SALMON: CLIMATE-SMART AQUACULTURE

In 1989, a transgenic Atlantic salmon was developed using recombinant DNA technology by a research team working at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  The transgene enabled the salmon to grow year-round and thus to achieve market size in half the time of conventional Atlantic salmon.  It soon became apparent that farming these salmon in conventional sea pens would not be possible due to concerns regarding escape and possible negative impacts on wild Atlantic salmon populations. Consequently, land-based farming in tanks using either flow-through or recirculating water was proposed. The development of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) has come a long way since 1989 and the current state-of-the-art of RAS technology enables full-cycle production from egg to market-size (4-5kg). The bottleneck for land-based salmon farming to market size has been slow growth using conventional Atlantic salmon. AquaBounty's AquAdvantage Salmon, with its fast growth rate, eliminates the bottleneck and enables the financial viability of full-cycle production.

This presentation will discuss the benefits of farming AquAdvantage Salmon in land-based farms with reference to climate change and the increasing need to have total control of the farming environment in the face of an increasingly unpredictable natural environment.