Aquaculture for all

Weekly Overview: Marine Harvest Investigates Using Coniferous Trees for Fish Feed

Salmonids Nutrition Health +6 more

ANALYSIS - Norwegian salmon farming company, Marine Harvest, is investigating the potential to use coniferous trees as a fish feed.

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The company has made several successful attempts to use coniferous as feed for farmed fish, according to the NRK.

Using local trees to make feed would reduce the dependence on soy from Brazil and if everything goes according to plan, fish feed will be coming from the woodland in around ten years time.

In other feed news, scientists at Aberystwyth University, UK, have shown that home-grown lupins provide as good a source of protein as imported soya for fish feeds.

A three year project revealed that livestock, poultry and fish given rations containing lupins perform equally well and in some cases better than those fed rations of comparable quality containing soya.

"Our research findings here have proven that we can increase the amount of protein that can be grown here in the UK, with proven practical and economic benefits to producers," said Professor Nigel Scollan, Waitrose Chair of Sustainable Agriculture at IBERS and the Principal Investigator on this research project.

The Pitcairn Islands is to be home to the world's largest marine reserve after the UK Government announced the protection of 834,334 km2.

The reserve is home to at least 1,249 species of marine mammals, seabirds and fish and the new reserve protects some of the most near-pristine ocean habitat on Earth.

In other news, Chile has confirmed a new case of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) on a farm in central Ballena 1, southern Aysen region.

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