The production of farmed lumpsucker in Norway has increased significantly in recent years, and a further increase in both the production and use of farmed lumpsucker is expected. This increase will be followed by new disease problems, and one of the most important measures to reduce the risk of disease will be to use only farmed vaccinated lumpsucker. However, for most pathogens, and especially for parasites, vaccines are not available and they are difficult to develop. So far, wild broodfish has been used but the aim is to be independent of wild broodfish in the future. The microsporidia Nucleospora cyclopteri has been associated with chronic mortality among farmed lumpsucker fry on the Atlantic coast of Canada (Mullins et al. 1994) and with pathological changes in farmed fish in Norway (Alarcon et al., 2015). The parasite has been shown to be a common parasite wild fish and has also been detected in egg and roe fluid. Thus this parasite has the potential to be a significant problem in rearing of lumpsucker. Regardless of the infection background, fish in in open cages in the sea can be infected by parasites from the environment and could develop disease. Alltogether there is a great need for increased knowledge of the impact of N. cyclopteri has on lumpsucker and the project aims to obtain some of this important knowledge. In the same way as knowledge about pathological changes in the fish is important for good disease diagnosis, knowledge about normal anatomy/histology of uninfected individuals is important for assessing these pathological changes. The project will study this and the results will contribute to improved diagnostics that benefit all players in the industry. In addition the project aims to establish an infection model for N. cyclopteri which is important for studying the effects of infections, immunology and for the development and testing of any treatments and vaccines. The project also seeks to find out whether the parasite has an intermediate host or if it infects directly and/or can be transmitted vertically. The last is not especially important when developing disinfection procedures for roe.
Project manager
Partners
- Patogen AS
- Marine Research Institute
- University of Bergen
