Salmon

The overall goal for the salmonid group in the DECIDE project is to develop decision support tools for cultured Atlantic salmon in open-ocean net pens (Norway, Scotland, Ireland) and rainbow trout in ponds (Denmark). The focus will be on monitoring and predicting mortality, which is a proxy for health and welfare of cultured fish. Our aim is to develop automatic warnings indicating when mortality differs from expected. Additional information like sea lice count, environmental parameters or reported diseases will be used to enhance the predictions. Stakeholder needs will be central in this development, and data used will be as much as possible open sourced.

The feasibility to develop a multiple-country dashboard for Atlantic salmon mortality will also be explored. This may serve as an early warning system for participating and other regions, possibly of interest to countries farming salmonids in the North-Atlantic Ocean. The rationale for this is the open contact between farms in different countries, because of water currents, boat traffic and trination operating farming companies

Methods

Progress

Investigate possibility of collecting mortality data and putative explanatory variables for mortality for cultured Atlantic salmon in open-ocean net pens

Investigate stakeholder needs based on an early prototype dashboard (Feedback loop 1)

Model baseline mortality for Atlantic salmon (using different modelling approaches) 

Comparing and evaluating modelling approaches

Further develop prototype dashboards focusing on mortality 

Investigate stakeholder opinions on the improved decision support tools (Feedback loop 2) 

Refine dashboard 

Investigate stakeholder opinions on refined dashboard (Feedback loop 2)  

Investigate the possibility and needs to launch the decision support tools