NAUPLIUS

ELIMINATION OF PARASITIC COPEPOD IN FARMED SALMON

Target: to solve sea-lice impact on salmon farming with neither chemicals nor drugs
Challenge: finding a realistic business plan
Idea: using of invertebrate filter feeders, which eat the parasitic copepod in its early free-living planktonic stage
Development: Partner searching, IP protection, market analysis and business plan elaboration
Impact: Up to a 300 mill. € per year in Europe

DESCRIPTION

SEISTAG has been granted within SMEinstrument call. This is probably the most competitive call at H2020. The project title is ELIMINATION OF PARASITIC COPEPOD IN FARMED SALMON and it.s Acronym is NAUPLIUS.

The challenge of the Project is to define a business plan based on an innovative method for parasitic copepod elimination in farmed salmon.

To understand the relevance of the challenge, we have to consider that salmon farming is a big industry with ca. 14,000 mill. € per year in the world. One of the greatest problems for salmon farming is the parasitic copepod. This is a sea-lice which hangs in the fish avoiding its growth, producing wounds and even the death. It causes a cost of 300 mill. € per year in Europe.

Nowadays the fight against this parasite is done by means of using chemicals and drugs. It goes against the organic farming. Therefore, the companies look for alternative methods as long as using chemicals doesn’t fit to organic market, provides bad corporative image of salmon farming and raises exploitation costs. Other negative impacts can be found in environment and natural fish stocks.

The project deals with an innovative method for sea-lice elimination in salmon farms. It is the use of invertebrate filter feeders, which eat the parasitic copepod in its early free-living planktonic stage. It avoids the parasitic copepod reaches its adulthood in the parasitic stage when it hangs in the fish.

The method is environmental friendly, organic farming compatible and cost-effective. Preliminary cost analysis shows a 25% of cost savings and it might coproduce commercial filter feeders in the same salmon farm. Moreover the method is almost totally developed, having reached a TRL 8 after laboratory, pilot scale and operational environment demonstration.

Find here some technical details... The Project runs under the topic: Supporting SMEs efforts for the development - deployment and market replication of innovative solutions for blue growth. The Project was submitted to Call ID: H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017. The total Budget investment of the Company will be 71.429 € and an EU Contribution of 50.000 € will be received on return.

Cofunded by H2020