Effects of Ultraviolet Radiation (UVR) on fin health in Pacific salmon, Phase II

Description

Most salmon aquaculture facilities rear fish in indoor tanks or in outdoor tanks covered to reduce levels of natural light. While this is usually done to reduce aquatic plant growth or to discourage predators, it is known that natural lighting can be important in the rearing of fish. A frequent complaint from indoor fish culture operations however, is the presence of severely abraded fins. This redirected project is now aimed at determining why fin development in some salmonid species responds to UVR while others do not. The project is basically timeline inverted from the original proposal that was to quantify the amount of UVR needed for proper fin development in the first year, followed in subsequent years with a fine tuning of exposures and attempts to determine the physiological mechanism(s) responsible for this previously unknown phenomenon. In finding out why only some species respond to UVR, we will now likely uncover the mechanism first. This will be followed by a second year in which we quantify the amount to UVR needed to promote normal appearing fins in farm-reared salmon susceptible to fin abrasion.

Program Name

Aquaculture Collaborative Research and Development Program (ACRDP)

Year(s)

2008 - 2010

Ecoregion(s)

Pacific: North Coast and Hecate Strait

Principal Investigator(s)

Max Bothwell
Email: Max.Bothwell@dfo-mpo.gc.ca