A Different Kettle of Fish at the St. Andrews Biological Station

Over the past quarter century, in response to the collapse of wild fish stocks and increasing consumer demand, fish aquaculture has rapidly become an economic mainstay for some coastal communities in Atlantic Canada. The fish of choice for farming is the Atlantic salmon, but industry is aware of the dangers of monoculture and is keen to diversify. Many innovative projects, involving teams of scientists, economists and industry representatives, are now underway to explore the possibility of raising other fish species. Atlantic cod, with the wild fishery for it now in serious decline and its market value climbing, is a candidate with enormous potential.

Cod aquaculture is not a new idea. Norway, the United Kingdom and Iceland have each had some limited success with it. Small-scale farming, using cod caught from the wild, started up in Newfoundland in the past decade and achieved modest production levels, but it has been pretty much on hold since the moratorium on cod harvesting. The bottom line is that the industry has not grown large enough anywhere to create a reliable track record and a solid base of knowledge and expertise all of which are crucial to fostering a commercially viable cod aquaculture industry in Atlantic Canada. So how to prove to entrepreneurs, as well as to the people with the investment dollars to back them, that cod aquaculture can be a realistic business opportunity with good returns and a low risk of failure?

The dealmaker for getting it off the ground in Canada is the knowledge and ability to establish a pool of superior and reliable cod broodstock. This would guarantee the production of offspring with the optimal traits for high market value and adaptability to aquaculture conditions. As with all other animals and plants that have been domesticated from the wild since the dawn of agriculture, this outcome can only be achieved by a program of selective breeding.

And now for the "different kettle of fish." Traditional selective breeding programs require many generations to isolate and perpetuate the desired traits, generally with a strong probability of hits and misses along the way. The innovative Atlantic Cod Genomics and Broodstock Development Project is establishing genomics as a tool that will be able to fast track and refine the process. The project's primary task is to produce a pool of genetically superior cod broodstock - one for New Brunswick and one for Newfoundland - based on local cod stocks, and these will be made available to industry partners for commercial production. In the lifetime of the project, this superior broodstock will be bred using traditional methods, but, along the way, it will be used to build a genetic map of the Atlantic cod. The selective breeding will aid in the process of identifying relevant segments of genes associated with desirable commercial traits, which have been identified from discussion with industry partners. And for the long-term, the beauty of the concept is that the genetic markers will eventually help identify fish directly from the wild that already have the genes for the desired traits, thus circumventing the necessity to selectively breed for them.

Genome Canada is providing 50% of the funding for this unique four-year project, with the rest provided by the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, the governments of New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The project is co-led by Jane Symonds at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and Sharen Bowman at Genome Atlantic in Halifax. The research team includes scientists from DFO's St. Andrews Biological Station (SABS), the National Research Council (NRC) and three universities (New Brunswick, Memorial and Guelph). The project also has representatives of the aquaculture industry in both Atlantic Canada and New Hampshire, as well as the two provincial governments. An exciting offshoot of the project is that over 50 people are being hired to carry out the work.

Ed Trippel, a scientist at SABS, which is located next door to the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, is one of the research partners. His expertise in fish reproduction and breeding has been brought to bear on the development of the superior broodstock. He has just completed a full year of work on the project, with some very exciting results. In fact, 100,000 results - that's the number of juvenile cod that were bred in the hatchery facility at SABS.

The parents of the 100,000 offspring were caught locally. For the family-based breeding program, Trippel used specialized paired-mating techniques that he had originally developed for haddock, in addition to hand stripping methods. It was labour intensive work, with the embryos to be disinfected, then transferred to incubators, and finally to larger tanks as they grew. The 100,000 juvenile cod represented about 50 different families, and tracking of family performance (growth, health and body shape) was ongoing at SABS. Other key traits such as resistance to stress and disease are being tested by Kurt Gamperl, Memorial University, and Stewart Johnson, NRC, respectively.

The effort has been well worth it. Trippel was surprised and encouraged by how easily cod could be bred in captivity - and with remarkably few losses. The breeding program started in December 2005, and the genomics work began shortly thereafter, with the collection of tissue samples from the breeding program. Bowman is using these samples to build a "library" of cod genes, and progress is rapid. This work is placing Canada internationally at the forefront of cod genomics and the application of genomics technology to aquaculture.

By November 2006, all 100,000 of the juvenile cod had been put into industry sea cages at two sites in the Bay of Fundy. Of them, 9,000 have been tagged to allow continued tracking of traits as they grow out to market size. At harvest time, in two years, the best performers from the various families will be chosen to produce the next generation. This first generation is expected to achieve a 15% gain in body size over the original parents, with it levelling out to a 10% gain in subsequent generations.

As Trippel, who has spent much of his career studying the cod, sums up, "We had a very successful first year producing cod families, and we now have a good platform to charge ahead on the genomics." All in all, it's looking very good for cod aquaculture in Canada.

For more information:

• Cod Genome Project http://codgene.ca
• St. Andrews Biological Station
  http://www.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/SABS