Aquaculture for all

Making life tougher for sea lice

UK - Salmon farmers in Shetland have welcomed rule changes which allow them to make better use of existing sea lice "bath treatments".

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency earlier this week announced new thresholds after a five year study found no evidence of any impact from these treatments on the environment.

David Sandison, of Shetland Aquaculture, said the new rules would give salmon farmers the chance to use medicines for a longer period and that would help them tackle the parasite more effectively.

"This is all round good news for fish farmers, for the environment and also for wild fish interests in the whole of Scotland," Mr Sandison said.

"What it means is that we can use licensed treatments available to us as effectively as possible without unnecessary restrictions. In other words, we can control sea lice in a way that we manage the levels down to a point where we actually don't need so much treatment.

"That would be the objective of how to utilise these kind of things in the future. The issue here is to control sea lice to a level where you don't need too much to control them any further," Mr Sandison explained.

Source: Shetland Marine News

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