Research: A new scientific publication examines various methods for estimating number of salmon lice in samples. Fiskaaling researchers are co-authors on the publication, which is published in Journal of Fish Diseases.
The publication compares different methods of quantifying salmon lice in plankton samples. The head researcher sent plankton samples with an undisclosed number of salmon lice to laboratories in Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands. The laboratories used different enumeration methods to determine the number of lice in the samples.
The results demonstrated that all methods had certain advantages and disadvantages, as described in the publication. Fiskaaling used qPCR, which proved to be quite density dependent. It means that the results were particularly good when the samples contained a large number of plankton.
Other tests were performed using light microscope, flow cam, ddPCR and fPCR.
Samantha Bui from the Norwegian Marine Institute was project leader. Gunnvør á Norði and Ása Jacobsen, researchers at Fiskaaling, were responsible for the tests made in the Faroe Islands.
The full title of the publication is: “Finding the needle in the haystack: Comparison of methods for salmon louse enumeration in plankton samples.”
