Profile: Tackling sea lice
Professor Frank Nilsen of the Sea Lice Research Centre at the University of Bergen, Norway, on the research on-going to remove the scourge of sea lice from farmed fish stocks
SLRC is a research centre consisting of nine different partners; four of them academic and five industrial. Centres of research-based innovation are appointed by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) for up to eight years and funding is provided both from the NRC and the centre partners.
Our vision is for the Sea Lice Research Centre at the University of Bergen to become world leading on research on salmon louse and similar parasites. The nature of the centre will facilitate development of new methods for lice control and shorten the time from basic research to new products and tools for parasite control in the aquaculture sector to achieve truly integrated pest management in the future.
Sea lice are currently one of the major factors for economical loss in aquaculture of salmonids worldwide. Sea lice create cost due to treatment with anti-sea lice medicine, loss of growth as well as a negative environmental impact due to the release of lice larva that can infect wild salmonids. The annual cost due to sea lice is over €300m. Today, a major concern is related to an emergent development of resistance towards the currently used anti-sea lice drugs. Hence, there is a strong need to develop new tools for sustainable sea lice control in the future.
Development of new antiparasitic control tools is difficult and requires long-term efforts. SLRC has a broad approach towards new sea lice control that includes the development of new anti-sea lice drugs, immune control and in feed supplement. In order to facilitate the research and innovation, SLRC established and run two infrastructure work packages (WPs), LiceBase and LiceLab. LiceBase will be a database resource where the salmon louse genome annotation will be linked to functional data and be available for SLRC partners and other scientists. LiceLab is a key resource for experiments and the maintenance of different salmon louse strains. LiceLab will be set up with state of the art facilities to conduct accurate and high quality experiments that will facilitate research and innovation in the centre.
The industrial partners in SLRC cover the main aspects related to the salmon aquaculture industry. Two partners from the farming industry (Marine Harvest ASA and Lerøy Seafood group), one partner from the food industry (EWOS innovation), a partner from the pharmaceutical industry (Novartis Animal Health) and Patogen Analysis ensure a broad spectrum of industry, highly relevant for sea lice control. In addition to the University of Bergen (host institution), the Norwegian School of Veterinary Sciences, Institute of Marine Research and UNI comprise the academic partners in the SLRC. Together with the industrial partners, a powerful consortium has been established, which is well-suited to conduct research and innovation that will generate new tools for sea lice control in the future.
SLRC members have expertise in parasitology, functional genomics/molecular biology, pharmacology, immunology and host-parasite interactions that makes the consortium a very strong unit. A uniting factor is to utilise the salmon louse and salmon genome to identify new treatment targets and to use a molecular approach to increase the knowledge about key biological processes in sea lice. A key component in SLRC is to train PhD and master’s students. The nature of the centre will create an environment where students can work in close connection with industrial partners in the centre, hence offering a unique experience for our PhD and master’s students.
The SLRC was officially opened in September 2011 and a scientific ‘kick-off’ meeting was held in February 2012. After a period of recruitment, most people have now started work in earnest and the different projects are running. SLRC aims to develop a strong national and international collaborative network relevant for our area. We aim to work together with international sea lice research groups but also see a need to connect with groups working with non-fish parasites.
Frank Nilsen
Director, Sea Lice Research Centre
Bergen, Norway
+47 555 84412
