Enhancing Fish Health through Outreach and Optimization of Vaccination

FUNDED BY: THE NORTH CENTRAL REGIONAL AQUACULTURE CENTER (NCRAC)

BACKGROUND

Fish health continues to be identified as a high priority issue that must be addressed to improve aquaculture production in the North Central Region (NCR). This project is a direct result of conversations with producers in the NCR. Bacterial coldwater disease (BCWD), challenges with medicated feed availability, importance of water quality, nutrition and fish health management tools, improved access to trained fish veterinarians, and workshops were specifically identified by producers. In addition, based on previous survey findings, vaccination is currently utilized by 13%and 4% using veterinary feed directives for antibiotic use. However, producers have substantial interest in gaining access to vaccines. Since these results show that NCR producers would benefit from learning how to use vaccines for fish, this project proposes to train producers on the use of vaccines and advance the application of BCWD vaccines within NCR trout farms.

OBJECTIVES

NCR producers would benefit from learning how to use vaccines in fish production, therefore the proposed study aims to directly address this industry-identified need through outreach, training, and applied research. The objectives will train producers on the use of vaccines and advance the application of a flavobacteria (BCWD) vaccine towards use on NCR trout farms. Consequently, the overall goal for this project is to address the identified need for training on vaccine use on fish farms and access to vaccines for bacterial coldwater disease. This project will employ a unique and multifaceted approach that incorporates outreach with vaccine evaluation for bacterial coldwater disease, one of the region’s most consequential fish pathogens through the following objectives:

Objective 1. To build further awareness among producers on the benefits of vaccination for enhancing fish health in the NCR through various virtual meetings and conducting workshops to train fish farmers on the use of vaccines to manage disease.

Objective 2. To provide advanced fish vaccine use training for veterinarians to ultimately benefit NCR fish farmers. This objective includes conducting workshops to train veterinarians and fish health professionals on vaccine administration on NCR fish farms.

Objective 3. To enhance disease prevention in NCR trout and salmon farms through further optimization of recently developed bacterin (i.e., vaccine) preparations against bacterial coldwater disease. This includes evaluating the protective effects of vaccine (i.e., bacterin) preparations developed by our team against NCR-predominating flavobacteria under lab and on-farm conditions.

DELIVERABLES

• A webpage for the project will be created and housed at aquaculture.uwsp.edu to provide project overview, list of deliverables, and outreach efforts. Upon project completion, UWSP NADF will house deliverables permanently at UWSP library archive for online sharing.
• Three virtual focus-group sessions will be organized for producers to introduce basic vaccine use concepts and get input from producers on their training needs.
• Three virtual focus-group sessions will be organized for veterinarians to introduce basic vaccine use concepts and get input from veterinarians on their training needs.
• Two workshops will be implemented on vaccine training for producers, one in Michigan and the other in Wisconsin.
• A PowerPoint presentation will be created describing the project and outcomes that will be presented at NCR conferences and meetings. This presentation will also be recorded and available online.
• Two fact sheets, one describing region-specific fish vaccine use strategies and a second on specific vaccination approaches to prevent flavobacterial diseases (e.g., BCWD) in the NCR will be created and distributed.
• 1 – 2 peer-reviewed publications on the results of this project’s BCWD experiments will be submitted.
• The recovered and preserved Fp strains will be maintained and made available for companies (e.g., Aquatactics, see letter of support) to commercially disseminate vaccine preparations to farms under veterinary guidance.
• An article will be submitted to a journal (e.g. Aquaculture, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association) highlighting the importance of region-specific inter and transdisciplinary approach to address farmer problems in a world where outreach/extension full-time equivalent employees continue to decrease.
• A how-to video educating producers on vaccination techniques and procedures from the in-person workshops will be created and uploaded to UWSP NADF YouTube channel for ease of sharing and distributing.

PROJECT PARTNERS

•     Michigan State University
  • College of Veterinary Medicine
  • Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory
• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility
• Crystal Lake Fisheries, Inc.