Research under way for sea lice vaccine

Dan MacLennan
September 3, 2010
Courier Islander

Concerns about sea lice developing resistance to Slice - and the absence of any other approved methods to kill them - are driving research towards a sea lice vaccine.

"As we know, everybody tends to use Slice, but there's a big negative side to using chemo-theraputants," Microtek International research scientist David Asper said in Campbell River last month after Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea announced funding for his vaccine research project. "One of the biggest keys right now is we're starting to see pockets of resistance. We haven't seen very much here but we're starting to see pockets in Norway as well as in Chile.

"The difference is in places like that you can use other drugs. On the west coast we can't. We're very limited to what we can actually use to reduce sea lice numbers. That's very important, because once Slice fails... we need to find other ways to reduce sea lice."

The $36,438 funding came from Ottawa's Aquaculture Innovation and Market Access Program (AIMAP). Asper hoped to move on to field trials by 2012. He said it's not yet been decided where tests will take place.

Read the full story in The Courier Islander.