Micro-diet research held up because of lack of funding

USING live food to feed Atlantic halibut larvae and young juveniles is proving to be an expensive bottleneck to its commercial production, reports BERNADETTE TOURNAY.

However, if the halibut were early weaned with formulated micro-diets, it could considerably reduce costs and enable production to be scaled up, as well as providing a consistent source of nutrition in terms of availability and quality.

Despite this though, progress in developing micro-diets - which are made mainly from fishmeal, fish oil, vitamins and phospholipids - is not being pursued aggressively enough in Norway due to lack of funding, according to Dr Howard Browman of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, Austevoll Research Station.

"Research