Exploring ISAAH

by Dr Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director, IFFO

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the International Symposium on Aquatic Animal Health (ISAAH), held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island Canada. This event, held on a four-year cycle, draws aquatic animal health professionals from across the world.
 

The Symposium ran over the whole week, with many different sessions, and there was a great diversity of fish species discussed, reflecting the growth in aquaculture over time. As well as the usual suspects of the modern aquaculture industry, there were even special sessions devoted to the health of cleaner fish, ornamental fish, and zebra fish (for laboratory studies), so it really was all-encompassing in terms of the coverage of subject matter.

I was not attending the Symposium out of personal interest though, nor was I on holiday, even though Charlottetown appeared to be a very picturesque location, and worthy of some time spent as a tourist.

IFFO had submitted an abstract in order to provide a technical presentation within one of the sessions, the QASH project session. QASH is an acronym that stands for Quantitative Atlantic Salmon Health Assessment, and the project is a collaboration between scientists in Norway, Scotland, Chile and Canada, led by Prof Karin Pittman of the University of Bergen. The aim of QASH is to develop tools that permit rapid and accurate measurements of farmed salmon health, indicating very strong real-world applications of the research.

Within salmon farming there are some clear health challenges, often linked directly to pathogens such as sea lice, piscirickettsia, gill amoebae, salmonid alphavirus. The session was split into three, focusing on biomarkers, barriers and stressors, and available toolboxes, with some lively discussion at the end.

My IFFO paper focused on the link between nutrition and health in farmed salmon, exploring the changing profile of salmon feeds over time and the nutritional variability that has resulted. None of this is earth-shattering in terms of the messages and many are aware of the substantial progress that has been made in the substitution of marine ingredients over time.

That research has largely been undertaken by the feed companies, responding to market competition over time with their changing formulations. Much of this research is understandably commercial and confidential. Although some of the information has reached the public domain, the majority has not.

Read more HERE.

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