pathogens, parasites, husbandry, and environment, which significantly reduce productivity, sustainability and profitability of the industry. While resulting mortality and morbidity is highly variable, dependent on a number of factors, disease represents a sustainability issue for the industry. However, it is well established that disease impacts can be reduced significantly through regular health monitoring of stocks, with implementation of treatments, and disease management strategies.
The tools for diagnosing infection and disease in finfish aquaculture have grown significantly in recent years. Use of established diagnostic tools such as aetiological agent isolation, PCR and serology has dramatically increased. However, the manner in which these are most commonly carried out, as well as gold standard approaches for identifying clinical disease in gross pathology and histopathology are destructive. Destructive sampling has a number of drawbacks which centre around the need to remove individuals from the population, majorly this form of screening regimen is inhibitory to understanding herd health. As such, there is significant demand within the industry for non‐destructive means of health assessment and pathogen screening.
This presentation aims to concisely describe the current utilization, challenges, and future potential of non-destructive technologies in Atlantic salmon culture. Specifically, environmental monitoring of conditions and pathogens and application of blood chemistryto infer health of stocks will be given focus.