Determining the area production yield that balances the risk of disease spread between marine salmon farms and economic sustainability.

The overall goal of this project is to establish both biologically and economically sustainable production yield estimates for salmon farming areas around the world. Over the last two decades, the salmon aquaculture industry has expanded significantly in Norway, Canada, and Chile. This expansion has resulted in an increase in the numbers of fish on farms, and we believe this change in industry structure has led indirectly to an increase in frequency of infectious disease occurrences. We also believe the increase in production yield per site and area has made it more difficult and expensive to control diseases. Of particular interest are sea lice infections, and certain viral and bacterial diseases that are under surveillance. Existing government disease -monitoring programs permit us to develop and validate predictive models that can be used to inform producers and policy makers on economic and biological capacities of different fish farming areas. This project will compile and analyse hydrological info rmation, management, and disease data from Canada, Norway, and Chile, and determine which variables drive disease expression and which should be included in area predictive model(s) to establish production yields for optimal economic benefit and minimal d isease risk. The analysis of data from varying international geographic areas will enable us to compare scenarios that would otherwise not be possible.