NTNU Oceans Pilot on Aquaculture - Environmental interactions

The pilot study is a multidisciplinary and highly innovative research programme where researchers and PhD students collaborate to increase the knowledge base of interactions between aquaculture and the marine environment. It is initiated by NTNU Oceans. 

AQUAEXCEL2020

AQUAEXCEL (AQUAculture infrastructures for EXCELence in European fish research) is a EU-funded project (2015-2020) providing the aquaculture research community with a platform of top class research infrastructures. NTNU offers access to the CodTech lab, an advanced cultivation hatchery unit, and the Marine Cybernetics lab, designed for tests on sea cages or their components. Send in your application! See Call for proposals for Transnational Access.
Read the AQUAEXCEL2020 articles in "International Aquafeed" and "Milling and Grain".

Bridgehead Aquaculture 

Through regional cooperation and interaction at all levels, NTNU and the secondary school at Frøya have the ambition to develop a research-based aquaculture sector. This is achieved through a regional seafood business platform, facilitating student and research projects in collaboration with aquaculture companies, student excursions and bi-annual knowledge exchange conferences.

The Research Council of Norway has funded the "Bridgehead Aquaculture 2050" project for building competence in the Mid-Norway aquaculture sector.

CLEANFEED

The use of cleaner fish is an important non-medicamental method to combat salmon lice. Over 30 million lumpfish are produced each year for the use in Norwegian aquaculture sea cages. The understanding of the nutritional demands is important to be able to develop feed and feeding strategies ensuring the production of healthy cleaner fish with a good survival rate. The project is supported by the The Norwegian Seafood Research Fund (FHF) and is coordinated by NOFIMA. (2017-2020) 

Aquaculture industry and learning

This national projet (2016-2020) will identify actions, mechanisms and structures promoting learning cultures in the aquaculture industry. The acquired knowledge will provide insights in rationalities for valuing and merging experience and knowledge, and reflect characteristics and dynamics in the knowledge society learning cultures. These insights will create a knowledge base for reflection and choice for actors in the aquaculture industry concerning challenges of knowledge, leadership and eduction and learning. The knowledge will be shared with relevant actors through an active dialogue. Contact: Prof. Jorun Stenøien

Blue Legasea

This blue bio-marine cluster in the Møre region represents one of the most complete clusters within marine ingredients in the world, covering all functions in the value chain from fish resource to customer, and it has developed a close collaboration between industry, suppliers, university and research institutions. In Møre there are around 500 companies associated with marine foods, representing an annual turnover of around NOK 38 billion. In 2013 Legasea was granted the status of a "Norwegian Innovation Cluster" under the Arena programme. The results of the collaboration appeared sooner than expected. Making use of trimmings in this way will improve sustainability and the creation of value throughout the marine food industry. NTNU is member of the cluster.

Centre for Digital Life Norway

Centre for Digital Life Norway is a unique transdisciplinary research centre creating the biotechnology for tomorrow. Our aim is to evolve new knowledge and methods to create value and address societal challenges. Aquaculture is one of the focus areas, with "Digital Salmon - From a reactive to a pre-emptive research strategy in aquaculture" as a core research project. The Centre is is coordinated by NTNU.
 

Circular Ocean

Circular Ocean is a EC supported project (2016-2018) seeking to inspire enterprises and entrepreneurs to realise the opportunities of discarded fishing nets in the Northern Periphery & Arctic (NPA) region, and hence put the increasing levels of marine litter to a stop. Through transnational collaboration and eco-innovation Circular Ocean will develop, share and test new sustainable solutions to incentivise the elimination, collection and, reprocessing of discarded fishing nets and assist the movement towards a more circular economy.

Curriculum Development for Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition Security

This ERASMUS+ project will develop Master programmes focusing on Fisheries and Aquaculture Food Security in the Asia-Pacific region. The course will introduce among others the global issues affecting seafood production and trading, and will promote an understanding of the key factors affecting aquatic food production, post-harvest protocols, post-mortem metabolic events and microbial/chemical processes key for food safety and quality. Sensory assessment and shelf-life extension technologies will also be covered. Contact: Jørgen Lerfall

DigiSal

In the project "Towards the Digital Salmon: From a reactive to a pre-emptive research strategy in aquaculture" (DigiSal) the researchers will establish a mathematical model of the salmon physiology, to aid the development of tomorrow's salmon feed. The long term vision is to construct the Digital Salmon - a system physiology model where all the salmon's body functions are simulated in a coherent mathematical model. This will be the core in an open access knowledge platform of salmon. (2016-2019)

EXPOSED

The Norwegian Centre for Research-based Innovation (SFI) has an aim to develop knowledge and technologies for EXPOSED aquaculture operations, enabling a sustainable expansion of the fish farming industry. It brings together global leading salmon farmers, key service and technology providers and strong research groups. EXPOSED is hosted by SINTEF Ocean, and includes a strong involvement of the NTNU AMOS Centre of Excellence. 

Improved shelf life

The project «Innovative technological solutions for increased shelf life of processed seafood» (2015-2018) will develop new combinations of processing technologies for the production of safe and ready-to-eat seafood products. The project is funded by the Regional Research Found and seafood industry; project manager: Jørgen Lerfall.

MACROSEA

The project will target successful and predictable production of high quality biomass, enabling to take key steps towards a cost-effective industrial cultivation of macroalgae. Its primary objective is to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge platform on fundamental production biology and technology for cultivation, over a wide range of climatic, ecological and physical regimes. It also aims to develop generic models and simulation tools for farm systems and biomass production. MACROSEA is funded by the Research Council of Norway (2016-2019).

MicStaTech 

The project "Water treatment technology for microbial stabilization in landbased aquaculture systems" pursues the concept of establishing and maintaining stable microbial systems, by upscaling and optimisation of water treatment technology for both flow-through systems as recirculating aquaculture systems. The paradigm favouring a stable and elevated bacterial abundance is foreseen to reduce fish mortality and to reduce water treatment costs. The project is coordinated by NTNU and runs until 2018. It is funded through the COFASP ERA-Net. 

MIRA 

Marine microorganisms are a natural source of essential fatty acids, proteins, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. The project "MIcrobially produced Raw materials for Aquafeed" aims to establish new knowledge on the possibility of using biotechnological production systems for realization of bacteria and photosynthetic microalgae as sustainable resource for protein and EPA/DHA in salmon feed.

OPTIMAT

The ocean is an important food source. Technological knowledge and expertise throughout the food chain are necessary to successfully transform these recources into valuable products on the market. OPTIMAT is a cross-disciplinary NTNU programme looking at technology and product quality; food safety and risk management; and production efficiency.

Prohealth

In order to guarantee the consumer healthy pelagic fish products, quality and beneficial components should be preserved through the whole processing chain. ProHealth will contribute to overcome the processing challenges and knowledge gaps that hinder the development of healthy pelagic fish food matrixes. Contact: Prof. Turid Rustad

PROMAC

The world’s oceans have the largest unlocked potential for meeting the increasing demands for food and feed resources. PROMAC will investigate three different species of seaweeds as potential novel raw materials for human food and domestic animal feed applications. The project on " Energy efficient PROcessing of MACroalgae in blue-green value chains" is funded by the Norwegian Research Council and runs until 2018.

Reducing Risk in Aquaculture

This project researches and develops novel concepts for autonomous operations and technology to improve safety and efficiency in aquaculture. In particular, the project will address daily operations and inspection, maintenance, and repair (IMR) for exposed locations, but the project results will also be applicable to more sheltered fish production. Moreover, the project will assess, utilize and possibly adapt technology developed for subsea IMR in the oil and gas industry. Advances in sensor technology, robotics, ICT, and localization methods create new opportunities for reducing operators' manual workload and exposure time on the facilities at sea, for preventing fish escape, and for improving safety and operational efficiency. (2016-2019)

RENSVEL 

The growing use of lumpfish and ballan wrass as cleaner fish to combat sea lice in aquaculture, calls for an increased understanding of welfare and stress among these species. Good welfare may have a positive effect on the lice grazing efficiency. The project will develop robust and knowledge-based operational indicators that will secure good welfare. (2015-2018)

SAFEFISHDISH

The aim of this COFASP ERA-NET project is to increase the quality and safety of fish (cod and salmon) through the value chain from harvest or catch to the consumer. It is important to start preservation early in the value chain. This can be done by superchilling, modified atmosphere packaging, coating with chitosan and protective cultures and a combination of these. Contact at NTNU: Turid Rustad.

Sensitivity of fish to seismic sound

The aim of the project is to characterize physiological stress responses to seismic air gun surveys by measuring heart rate change, through tagging the fish, in cod and e.g. haddock. Post-exposure activity will be monitored to determine magnitude and duration of responses. This pilot project will increase our knowledge of how response and sensitivity to noise from petroleum exploration activities may vary among species of highly valued fish species. (2017-2018)

SISVI

SISVI is a competence project funded by industry partners and the Norwegian Research Council. The project focuses on industry needs in order to enhance competitiveness, by implementing sustainable business practices. One of its case studies relates to the recycling of plastic components in the Norwegian fish farming industry. (2014-2018)

SMILA 

Salmon lice is the most important challenge in Norwegian aquaculture today. There is a clear lack of understanding of the mechanisms how sea lice can infect salmonid fish in the wild, due to the low densities of both fish and lice. These mechanisms will be studied in the project, as well as the infections between wild and cultivated salmon stocks. (2016-2019)

Taskforce Salmon Lice

This programme was established by NTNU and a group of aquaculture companies in Central Norway to combat the problem of salmon lice. Its aim is to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms of salmon lice spreading in the environment. A group of 6 PhD candidates and their supervisors are using ecological, metabolic and genetic tracing methods of salmon lice in the interacting with their salmonid hosts. Some PhD positions are still available! Contact: Prof. Yngvar Olsen.