Open Competition 2 - Biotechnology

Automatic Vaccination and Tagging of Live Hatchery Fish

Sponsor: Northwest Marine Technology, Inc.

• Project Performance Period: 10/1/2001 - 9/30/2004
• Total project (est.): $3,294,512.00
• Requested ATP funds: $2,000,000.00

Aquaculture is the world's most rapidly growing sector of food production. This growth brings with it many challenges, including management of diseases that arise in crowded and stressful conditions at fish farms and hatcheries. Current vaccination practices are not fully reliable and add to the stress. Many salmon are vaccinated by hand, and semi-automatic methods require the fish to be anesthetized and fed individually into a machine. Northwest Marine Technology Inc. plans to design and build a prototype system that automatically measures, sorts, vaccinates, and tags juvenile hatchery fish in a single process. In a three-year project, NMT will adapt its existing fish marking and tagging technology for the vaccination application. The overall system is envisioned as a mobile trailer unit (for serving remote hatchery sites) that can handle two fish per second, or 50,000 fish per shift, while offering gentle and precise control with high accuracy and reliability. The system will be based on the company's patented approach of exploiting the natural reaction of fish to swim against a current, inducing them to enter a sorting mechanism and then vaccination lines. Machine vision will be used to sort the fish by size. A module will be designed to direct a needle to a fish's abdomen, insert it to the appropriate depth, and inject the correct dose of vaccine. Sensors will be used to analyze fish density and activity in real time and achieve optimal system flow. In addition to the necessary technological innovations, overall challenges will include rapid and sensitive control of the fish behavior and movement and integration of the components into a commercially viable system. The ATP funding will greatly accelerate the research. If successfully developed, the new technology will be faster, cheaper, and more reliable than current vaccination practices and also reduce stress and mortality of the fish. The potential market would be huge: By the year 2010, nearly 1 billion hatchery fish will need to be processed worldwide. The technology could help restore depleted salmon species, manage many wild fish stocks, and benefit the entire aquaculture industry. The tags would indicate vaccination status and offer traceability of farmed fish products as an aid to public health and in monitoring fish that escape to the wild.

For project information:

Guy Thornburgh, (360) 468-3375
guy.thornburgh@nmt-inc.com

ATP Project Manager

Douglas Bischoff, (301) 975-8597
douglas.bischoff@nist.gov