Science Centres: Fisheries

NIWA fish disease expert Dr Lincoln Tubbs performing a post-mortem on a juvenile hapuka (groper) at Bream Bay. (Photo: Larry Hammell, Atlantic Veterinary College, Canada)

NIWA is working on more efficient and environmentally-friendly ways of managing aquatic animal health in order to enhance aquaculture productivity and sustainability.

We’ve adopted some principals from mammalian pharmacology (the study of how drugs interact with the body over time) to better predict the outcome of a dosing regimen. Using an established drugfor the treatment of parasitic worms in kingfish, we have modelled the link between drug performance and drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion in fish, all of which affect treatment outcome.

“This approach can improve the effectiveness of the drug, reduce costs, minimise waste and environmental impact, and identify where therapies are unlikely to succeed,” says Andrew Forsythe, NIWA’s General Manager of Aquaculture & Biotechnology. “It also provides a mechanism to predict and develop treatments for emerging diseases of new aquaculture species, such as groper.” In the future, we hope to examine the effectiveness of natural marine extracts, identified by our biotechnology team, as therapeutics in aquaculture.

This research is funded by the Foundation for Research, Science & Technology.