As Ståle mentioned in last week’s editorial, we have in the aqua medicine group just had a meeting with aqua medicine biologists educated at UiB. This to get input from them how to better equip today’s aqua medicine biology students for the demanding profession they are going into. The feedback was clear: the aqua medicine students need more practice before they enter their profession. With a survey among aqua medicine biologists carried out by Tekna fresh in mind, we see that such an adjustment towards more practice is extremely important. There it emerged that the aqua medicine biologists experience a very high workload and challenging ethical dilemmas as part of their daily work. With the high mortalities indirectly caused by the salmon louse, many aqua medicine biologists encounter dead fish every day out in the field, and the poor fish health takes a toll on them. We must therefore equip them better for these tasks. In this connection, we have started planning a seminar day for the students in May, where we have invited several practicing aqua medicine biologists from different parts of the salmon production to talk about practical fish health, and the hope is that we will round off the day with the issue above. Many have already agreed to talk and are very positive about the initiative. We have also received help from the NCE Seafood Innovation cluster and Vestland fylkeskommune in planning and funding, so I think this can be really good seminar and something we will try to make it a yearly event.
To round of this, I just want to bring up some rare happy news that has to do with salmon lice. This annoyingly resistant parasite has over the past years generated quite a few PhD theses, and today the stage is set for yet another salmon lice defense when Helena Midtbø will defend her thesis. Among other things, she has worked with a protein that the salmon louse spits onto the salmon’s skin to kill immune cells. Very fascinating, and I would recommend you come to the small auditorium at 15:00 today if you want to hear more about this!
Aina-Cathrine Øvergård
Head of the Fish Health Group