E!12813 Microscopic cryoplankton feed for early-stage larvae in marine fish aquaculture

The main bottle-neck of producing marine fish is the start feeding period, where the fish larvae is dependent of live feed. Today, rotifers and brine shrimp are used as start food, but those prey items are not natural for marine fish. As a consequence, suboptimal performance (growth, deformities etc.) and high mortalities of fish larvae are experienced at hatcheries. Production of rotifers and brine shrimp of good quality require high skills on the staff, and up to 80% of the labour at a hatchery is allocated for producing live feed. Conventional live foods contributes to an unfavourable tank environment, with a high concentration of opportunistic bacteria. Planktonic has developed a live feed consisting of offspring from barnacles (nauplii), and this is a natural prey for marine fish larvae which it is evolutionary adapted to feed on. The nauplii is cryopreserved, which make them able to revive to live individuals after thawing. In this project, we developed a smaller prey particle, MI-CRYOPLAN, which can replace rotifers. MI-CRYOPLAN consist of nauplii from other barnacle species with considerably smaller nauplii sizes than what we are currently using as cryopreserved prey items for fish. The fish larvae will have access to a natural feed, which results in an optimal development and survival of the fish. Additionally, it contributes to a considerable relief in the daily work for employees at the hatcheries. The workload at hatcheries will be reduced to 1/10 or less, it will be no need for expertise in producing live feed and opportunistic bacteria with resulting high fish mortality will be avoided. To sum up, all advantages of using MI-CRYOPLAN will contribute to a more profitable production of marine fish, and will probably solve the bottle-neck of start-feeding. 5 years post-project (2026), it is estimated that Planktonic will have an accumulated revenue of EURO38.8m and a profit of EURO26.6m.

In the MicroPlankton project, it was demonstrated that we could replace rotifers 100% with the developed Mi-CRYOPLAN live food. We are now ramping up production to meet the market demand for the Mi-CRYOPLAN product. So far, we have produced small amounts which have been very positively received in the market. The effects of using Mi-CRYOPLAN on fish larvae have resulted in far higher quality of the fish juveniles, and a more beneficial bacterial composition, both in the fish gut and in the fish tank. Bio-security is one of the major concerns at marine hatcheries producing juvenile fish and crustaceans. We have estimated a sales of the Mi-CryoPlan to be about 3 tonnes in 2023, and 6 tonnes in 2024. The major customers the first two years after project completion will be producers of ballan wrasse and Atlantic cod, where such a live feed is very much demanded. From 2024 and onwards, we belive that we will penetrate the markets that are producing sea bream, sea bass and shrimps. Those are more conservative markets, considered to be more difficult to enter, but on the other side, it is a huge market where we can realize large sales. The Mi-CRYOPLAN will result in larger sales of our already existing starter food products. To ramp up the production of Mi-CRYOPLAN we have identified areas with a natural high concentration of barnacles, which is the raw material for the new cryopreserved live food. Amongst those, it is man made structures in UK that has a raw material biomass of up to 100 tonne, in relatively restricted areas. As the nutritional composition of the Mi-CryoPlan is superior to the alternatives, we think it will be possible to cultivate new fish and crustacean species with very high nutritional requirements in the first phase. Those can be overfished and valuable species, like tuna, groupers, snappers, crayfish and more.

We will develop a superior live feed, MI-CRYOPLAN, containing microscopic marine cryoplankton to support the crucial early-stage larval development of marine fish species in aquaculture. MI-CRYOPLAN will slash the time and cost for industry to produce and use live feeds. It will cut infection risk and take larval nutrition to the next level, thereby transforming growth and survival rates. Industrial proof-of-concept will come from tests undertaken at a commercial hatchery in Spain. EU aquaculture was worth €4bn in 2015 but has lost global market share, partly because commercial fish species have complex larval feeding needs that are not met today. A more reliable and higher quality feed will unlock sustainable economic fish production and increase yields. Small planktonic crustacean nauplii are a key feed for larvae of wild fish species. Fish larvae fed on revived nauplii after cryo-preservation show doubled growth, 50% higher yields and superior final product quality. Our refined European harvesting network and semi-automated production process will allow the year-round supply of MI-CRYOPLAN to commercial hatcheries within pre-nursery production of marine fish species. Detailed user protocols will maximise product impact. PLT will expand their direct sales network and capacity to the European and global marine fish aquaculture sector, leading to accumulated revenues of €38.8m and profits of €26.6m in the first 5 years post-project up to 2026.