Introduction

Nofima is working in R&D for the aquaculture, fisheries and food industry, and provide research at an international level. Nofima has three research divisions; Aquaculture Division, Division for Fisheries Industry and Market, Division for Food and Science.

Nofima is located at Ås, Stavanger, Bergen, Sunndalsøra, and Tromsø. For this project NOFIMA Centre for Recirculation in Aquaculture (NCRA) and NOFIMA Cleaner Fish Experimental Unit (CFU), both at the Research Station for sustainable aquaculture at Sunndalsøra, and the Sunndalsøra has indoor tanks with salmon, wrasse and lumpsucker on RAS and flow through.

NOFIMA NRSA (Research station for Sustainable Aquaculture)

Infrastructure: NOFIMA NRSA (Research station for Sustainable Aquaculture)

Location: Sunndalsøra, NORWAY

Web site address: https://nofima.com/facility/research-station-for-sustainable-aquaculture/

Contact: Per Brunsvik (per.brunsvik@nofima.no)

Facilities

NRSA have facilities for aquaculture experiments with freshwater (ground water) and seawater (filtrated to 20 microns and UV-treated), in flow through and RAS. Fish species used in research are: salmon, lumpfish and ballan wrasse. There are tanks available from the size of start feeding up to fish size around 2 kg. Fish tanks have variation from 20 to 10.000 liters. The station has research facilities for nutrition, formulated feeds, physiology, breeding and recirculation studies.

The station has six different buildings: 3 buildings will be available for TNA experiments:

Building 4 NOFIMA, Salmon department has 81 x 500 l tanks, 24 x 1200 liter tanks, 32 x 200 l tanks all with feed Collection, 44 200 l tanks without feed collection. Several hatching units. The department has a possibility for temperature control, both warm and cold for both fresh and seawater. The department will be upgraded by June 2021.

Building 5 Cleaner Fish Experimental Unit (CFU) has license for holding ballan wrasse and lumpsucker.

The tanks (6 x 3000l; for broodstock, 15 and 24 units a 100 l for start feeding in 2 compartments, 12 x 250l units, and 12x 300l units, a hatching unit for eggs from both lumpsucker and ballan wrasse. The department can be used for broodstock nutrition, environment manipulation and experiments using dry feed for juvenile cleaner fish. The research aims at production of cleaner fish by aquaculture, as opposed to wild catch.

Building 6 NOFIMA Centre for Recirculation Aquaculture (NCRA) features 4 RAS-systems, 100 m3 (9 pcs), 3 m3 (30 pcs) and 0.5 m3 (18 pcs) tanks in 6 experimental sections with individual light regimes. The facility provides both RAS and flow-through (FT) with freshwater (ground water) and seawater (microscreen and UV-filtered). NCRA carries out research on recirculation on a broad basis, and experiments in the areas of fish nutrition, technology, physiology and welfare. High degree of control and monitoring is possible using modern e-infrastructure developed in previous AQUAEXCELs.

Services currently offered by the infrastructure

Users will be able to work with salmon from eggs to 2000 grams with on flow through and RAS water on a wide range of topics, and on Broodstock, egg quality and nutrition on cleaner fish.

NOFIMA Research station for Sustainable Aquaculture principal activities are: a) Nutrition, feed and feeding, b) Breeding and genetics, c) New species, d) Quality, e) Preventive health measures, and f) Production technology and the environment.

Modality of access

Visitors and partners that come to NRSA and want to perform trials in the facility will meet a scientific environment with highly qualified personnel. The visitors will collaborate with leading scientists within physiology, nutrition, water quality and welfare. The technical support at the research station is of highest quality since they are trained and educated to perform trials in a scientific manner. Nofima Sunndalsøra is frequently receiving national and international visiting scientists that perform trials and exchange scientific ideas. The visitors will be carefully followed up and be included in the daily scientific work. NRSA can also provide offices, meeting rooms, and access to housing.

Unit of access

The unit of access at NRSA is defined as one tank/week; equalling the occupation of one standard tank for seven days. For instance, 108 tank/weeks can imply an experiment using 12 tanks (e.g. a 2×2 factorial experiment in triplicate tanks) for 9 weeks. Nofima uses actual cost method; it is an accurate and updated method to calculate the cost associated with the TNA.

Watch a short film on the NOFIMA NRSA facility >>>