St. Johns, NFL, Canada.
Though the Live Feeds Session was held on the last day of the AAC Conference, it was very well attended and appears to have been a great success. There were five invited speakers and seven contributing papers. There were more than 40 participants from industry, university and government research programs. The format was very informal and after approximately 20 minutes of introductory comments from each speaker, the discussion was largely driven by questions from the participants.
INVE provided 8 kg of Artemia cysts which were used in demonstrating proper decapsulation procedures and newly hatched nauplii were used to demonstrate enrichment techniques. Phil Boeing, Aquafauna provided free samples and introduced a number of new live feed enrichment products including Algamac-3000 a spray-dried heterotrophic algal product which has very high DHA content and high DHA/EPA ratio. This workshop was enthusiastically received by the participants who felt that this was a more useful and informative format that the usual conference format which has 14 minute presentations and little time for questions and discussions. There was unanimous agreement that such a workshop should be included in the AAC meeting to be held October 1999, in Victoria, BC.
A few examples of the important information exchanged at the meeting include:
- Description of a relatively easy to maintain semi-automatic copepod culture and collection system. This might help to relieve some of the dependence on inferior nutritional quality Artemia and rotifers for marine fish larval culture. (Stottrup)
- Identification of a potentially catastrophic over-feeding problem with MMI, halibut larvae. (Heral)
- Results from a cool-water Artemia enrichment technique that results in much higher DHA levels and acclimates the Artemia to larval culture temperatures. This results in greater nutrient enrichment and more active Artemia, which in turn are more rapidly consumed by the
marine fish larvae. (Jonnathan Moir)
- A technique to determine health and stress status of cultured rotifers and use of hormones to reduce stress and double growth rates of rotifers. (Higawara)
- Significant improvements in Artemia enrichment using phospholipids purified from fish roe to produce enrichment emulsions.
(McEvoy)
- A new combined enrichment "antibiotic" media that significantly decreased total and potential pathogenic bacterial levels of enriched Artemia nauplii. (De Wolf, INVE).
- A new very high DHA, spray-dried algal enrichment product (Algamac-3000) that could significantly improve Artemia enrichment and reduce malpigmentation in juvenile halibut and other marine flatfish. (Boeing, Aquafauna)
John Castell
<CastellJ@mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca>