Local council spends NOK 5m in fight against lice
A local authority in Norway is investing five million kroner (£70,000) to help in the fight against sea lice.
Vestland County Council, which lies 90-100 km north of Bergen, said the move is designed to move from red to green in Norway’s “traffic light” system for farming permits, thereby increasing food production and value creation in the future.
Vestland is currently in the “red” fish farming zone, which means that no expansion is permitted in the area, and although the government has proposed scrapping the traffic light scheme that has yet to be approved by the Norwegian parliament.
With a general election on the horizon, the issue is likely to become bogged down in political drama and may have to wait until a new government is in place, which may have a different policy.
Vestland Council Industry spokesperson Sigrid Brattabø Handegard said: “Salmon lice are one of the main threats to wild fish. Many different measures have been implemented to reduce the impact of lice on wild fish, without sufficient knowledge of what the best solutions are. Now we have to find the solutions that actually work.”
Vestland County Council says the money will be used on a number of targeted research and development measures designed to reduce sea lice numbers, look at technical solutions and other preventative measures and examine why salmon and sea trout numbers are in decline.
“Despite many new measures in recent years, we still lack an overview of what actually has the best effect. The county council will therefore support projects that evaluate existing preventive measures, and projects that test new technical solutions against sea lice,” said Handegard.
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