A new boat will soon be visiting Cooke Aquaculture’s fish farms.
The Miss Mildred has arrived in Bayside, N.B., and is equipped with a system that allows farmedsalmon to be cleaned of lice without the use of chemical treatments.
“It’s being put into use right away,” Joel Richardson, spokesman for Cooke Aquaculture, said Friday.
The Miss Mildred carries a custom-built Thermolicer system that pumps salmon aboard from Cooke’s net pens, passes them through a bath of water ranging from 30 to 34 degrees Celsius, and returns them to their pen within 30 seconds.
The parasitic sea lice can’t survive the sudden temperature change. They die and are removed from the water to be composted on land.
“Trialed last summer, this technique has proven to be 98 per cent effective at removing the lice without harming the fish,” said Richardson. “It’s a simple and effective treatment that further reduces our need to use chemicals or medicines.”
The vessel will see initial use in New Brunswick and Newfoundland, where the sea lice infestation is greater, but will be used at the company’s Nova Scotia operations as well.
Both Cooke and the new technology have not been without controversy.
In 2016, aquaculture company Marine Harvest accidently killed more than 100,000 of its own farmed salmon by sending them through a Thermolicer in Greshornish, Scotland. “It is extremely regrettable we lost fish at Greshornish, which we believe was the result of treating fish that had been weakened from other treatments, particularly for amoebic gill disease, in the preceding two months,” reads a news release from the company.
“Human error played a part in this incident, however these earlier treatments had saved many fish suffering from this environmental
gill challenge. In hindsight it is our belief that any bath treatment for sea lice would likely have resulted in mortality.”
Cooke itself has come under criticism after a January storm damaged fish pens in Jordan Bay, on this province’s south shore, and resulted in mortality. Washington State recently announced that it won’t renew the company’s leases along its shore after a large storm resulted in the release of thousands of farmed salmon into the wild.
“No farmer likes to lose their livestock,” responded Richardson.
“No matter what industry, whether it is chicken or pork or vegetables, there is never a time a farmer wants to lose their product. As farmers we try to mitigate losses due to parasite or storm damage.”
The Miss Mildred is part of that.
Neville Crabbe, director of communication for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, welcomed the vessel.
“I think it’s generally positive that companies are looking for alternatives to chemicals for treating sea lice,” said Crabbe.
“It’s a sign of the times — the lengths companies are willing to go to to combat this problem that is becoming worse and worse due to warming water temps.”