Terms of Reference

Sea Lice Monitoring and Non-chemical Measures

National Peer Review – National Capital Region

September 25-27, 2012
Ottawa, Ontario

Chairperson: Howard Powles

Context

The management of sea lice is a major challenge for the salmon aquaculture industry, both nationally and internationally.  It is recognized that there are biophysical differences between salmon growing regions within Canada including species of sea lice, alternate hosts, oceanography, etc.  These differences will be considered and addressed within the peer review process.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Aquaculture Management Directorate has requested science advice to support the optimization of sea lice management, including the development of integrated pest management and mitigation strategies, and science-based conditions of licence. 

To date, there have been many studies regarding various aspects of sea lice biology, monitoring control and management, as such, it is important to consolidate the large body of work in order to provide managers with peer reviewed, robust science advice.  This advice is required to support management decisions on issues such as thresholds/triggers, effective monitoring protocols, and wild/cultured interactions related to sea lice.

Objective

There is a need to assess the state of knowledge informing sea lice management measures, monitoring and interactions between cultured and wild fish and provide scientific advice to inform management practices.  Working paper(s) will examine issues on both the East and West coasts of Canada including commonalities and differences (e.g., species of sea lice, alternate hosts, oceanography) between the different salmon growing regions.

The scientific review will be structured and developed to address questions in the following areas:

Population ecology and epidemiology of sea lice in Canadian waters

1. Role of other sea lice hosts (wild salmonid and non-salmonid) as reservoirs and other factors influencing sea lice dynamics near or on farms.
2. Scientific basis for setting management and regulatory thresholds to treat farm salmon and minimize the risk of harm to wild juvenile salmon from exposure to farm-source sea lice.

Monitoring for sea lice on farmed and wild salmon in western and eastern Canada and advice on sound methodologies

3. Sampling design protocols for on-farm lice monitoring, including:  number of fish to be sampled, identification of lice, number of samples, handling of fish, etc.
4. Program design for on-farm lice monitoring, including:  frequency of sampling, timing, environmental factors to be considered, sea lice dynamics, etc.
5. Sampling design protocol for wild fish lice monitoring, including: number of fish to be sampled, identification of lice, number of samples, handling of fish, background sea lice levels, etc.
6. Program design for wild fish lice monitoring, including: frequency of sampling, out-migrations, in-migrations, sampling location, timing, environmental factors to be considered, sea lice dynamics, and other considerations (e.g., species differences, at-risk status of wild stocks of interest), etc.
7. Protocols for the management, dissemination and analysis of data resulting from monitoring programs.

Non-chemical measures of control, and prevention

8. Scientific advice on factors that influence the effectiveness of fallowing as a means of sea lice control, including fallowing time required, scale of fallow (e.g., farm-scale versus bay-scale), other factors required to interrupt sea lice population dynamics on farms to decrease next year’s load, etc.
9. The effect of farm density and stocking density on sea lice population dynamics at different scales (i.e., individual pens, individual farms, within a bay or area).
10. Scientific evidence to the effectiveness of other means of sea lice control such as, but not limited to, sea lice traps, cleaner fish, IMTA (biological filtering), etc.

Expected Publications

• Science Advisory Report
• Research Document(s)
• Proceedings

Participation

• DFOAquaculture Science Branch, Ecosystems and Oceans Science, Aquaculture Management Directorate;
• Provinces;
• Academia;
• Aquaculture industry;
• First Nations;
• Wild fishery organizations; and
• Environmental non-governmental organizations.