Experts in Teamwork, salmon, sustainability and MissionRio

I'm in the middle of a 3-week intensive course that's mandatory for all master students at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). The course is Experts in Teamwork. It's the only course NTNU really brags about - a lot.

It works like this: groups of students from all disciplines and areas come together, get a topic and make product. Then they also have to talk about how the group functioned - hopefully an argument or two - and then write a "group report". In other words we're supposed to learn to work together!

We're beginning the last of the 3 weeks on Monday. My group consists of two medical students, two in government studies and one economic student. I'm the only biologist and our subject is:
Marine biological resources management!

We decided to write a report that discuss how salmon farming can overcome it's current problems, that is 

- using wild fish as food, leading to overfishing

- diseases

- escape of farmed salmon that breeds with wild salmon or transmit lice 

We also wan't to see if any improvements on efficiency and sustainability can be transferred to other species in other countries - relating the whole thing to the world's food issues. Our work is coupled to MissionRio, a contest arranged by Technoport and NTNU in relation to the Rio+20 conference this summer. About 20 groups get to present their product to politicians, scientists and journalists at a conference in Trondheim this April. And there's a prize for the best product, apparently :)

The process of discovering problems with salmon farming has been very interesting. For example, less than 10% of the farmed salmons are lost annually, however these percents conceal the actual number: 36 million salmons die each year due to diseases.

This number is shockingly high and is mainly caused by viral diseases.

It is evident that more efficient vaccines are needed to stop the viruses from spreading. In addition good routines on how to the salmon is kept, handled and moved can reduce stress, which is known to be immunosuppressive in salmon. However, it is likely the use of strict routines on reporting of outbreaks, quarantine, disinfection of equipment and well boats and screening smolts for infection that has the greatest potential in working against more than one virus.

References:

Can we get the upper hand on viral diseases in Aquaculture of Atlantic salmon