Aerobics for salmon

(12.05.09) At a recent workshop on innovative aquaculture research, APC Senior Scientist Ståle Helland presented an example of interval training of salmon. This was done by a multi institutional research group working at the Nofima ? APC respiration laboratory at Sunndalsøra. This project involved NOFIMA researchers Barbara Grisdale-Helland and Ståle Helland.

The exercise was integrated with initial light manipulation used for acclimating salmon to become smolts. The two exercise regimes included increased exercise load and interval training. These yielded several, but different, positive effects for the salmon:

•  Both trained groups ate and grew better than the control fish
•  Training at constant, medium speed resulted in more efficient oxygen utilization than the two other groups
• When exposed to a pathogen causing infectious pancreatic necrosis, fish doing interval training had a higher survival rate than the control fish.

"The process of adapting to saltwater is probably the most stressful event a salmon experiences, and a training program, when optimized, might mitigate the mortality often observed soon after this transfer", says Helland. "The stressful introduction to saltwater also seems to be reflected by an increased requirement for essential amino acids. Our results from an experiment done in the Protein and Amino Acid section (PAM) of APC show that the lysine requirement is 30 to 70% greater than that at other times in the life of the salmon. In PAM, we are focusing on the amino acid requirements during this life stage of the salmon. We hope that optimal amino acid nutrition, together with the findings from the fish exercise program, will make life easier for the young salmon and more productive for the farmer."