From left, Knut Ellekjær, CEO of Cermaq Norway, Brit Tørud, head of fish health at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and Jan Robert Bell, operations manager at Cermaq Holmvåg. Photo: Mari Press
First published by the Norwegian Veterinary Institute.
The newly established Fish Welfare Award was presented during Aqua Nor in Trondheim. The organizers are the Fish Welfare Forum – a collaborative platform for the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the Institute of Marine Research, which has allied itself with the journal Norwegian Fish Farming for broad knowledge sharing.
The idea of the award is to highlight those who have implemented concrete measures to improve fish welfare in the hatchery or food fish phase.
–The winner is an actor who has taken action on the fish's first phase, and worked systematically on improvements in a number of conditions that affect welfare. The work has yielded results in the form of fewer losers. The fish also perform better in the sea. The attitude is that when the fish have their needs met, production also improves. We congratulate Cermaq Holmvåg as a worthy winner of the Fish Welfare Award, says jury member Brit Tørud from the Norwegian Veterinary Institute.
Focused fry producer
Cermaq Holmvåg is a small fry producer that makes three batches of 1.6 million eggs per batch each year. They have four employees and also produce some broodstock, or "elite fish" such as smolt. The volume of this is 220,000 and 440,000 each year. The winner comments on the award in this way:
What does it mean to win this award?
–Very gratifying. It shows that the jury also prioritizes the smallest individuals. Without good fry you won't get good smolt. Good smolt is what in turn produces good salmon. So the small fish are important.
What makes you so good at fish welfare?
–We have employees with many years of experience at the facility and concentrate on fry. We have time to prioritize the well-being of the fish. It is also the case that when we ask for something that affects welfare, we get what we need from our production manager at Cermaq.
What specifically have you done?
We have done research and moved the time of starter feeding from the hatchery to the starter feeding department. We see that the fry spread better in the tanks and come up into the water column earlier. They have a better appetite and are on the feed right away.
The distribution of feed has been improved by using two feeders per tank, in addition to some hand feeding. This provides better distribution. The feed must be placed right in front of the fish when they are so small.
We have been working on the hydraulics in the tank and gradually increase the water flow according to how well they can swim. We are researching to find the optimal flow, measuring and changing it almost daily.
Enough and the right type of light is another aspect. We are trying out LED lights with more blue and green in the light. We cannot measure the effect of this, but we see that the fish have good dispersion and that they take the feed. The temperature has also been adjusted to 12 degrees, while the standard in Norway is 14. We believe this gives the fish the opportunity to develop organs and skeleton naturally, more adapted to wild conditions.
What motivates you to work with welfare?
We have a desire to do better every year. By optimizing all factors, we see that we get better production by focusing on the needs of the fish.
The jury
The jury consisted of Pål Mugaas Jensen from Norsk Fiskeoppdrett, farmer Aino Olaisen, Brit Tørud and Stine Gismervik from the Fish Welfare Forum. The winner will receive a diploma and two gift vouchers of 10,000 kroner each from Aino AS and NCE Seafood.
The Fish Welfare Award will be awarded for the first time in 2021 to stimulate increased knowledge sharing and better fish welfare, and it is planned to be awarded annually. It is open to proposing new candidates throughout the year. The knowledge they have will be presented in the journal Norwegian Fish Farming.
The other nominees were:
- Tytlandsvik Aqua
- SalMar's IMM team
- Lumic/Power Service
- Cape Mar
- UIB/RASLAB/ILAB/eMar Digital AS
- Cargill
- FishGlobe
Here you can see recordings from the seminar.
