Seedling Production in Europe – From Laboratory to Industrial Scale

Brief Background

• Ardtoe was set up by the UK Seafish Industry Authority as an aquaculture research facility in 1964 and quickly gained an international reputation in the hatchery production of finfish and shellfish juveniles
• When we took over the lab in 2005, we scaled up the existing finfish hatchery (initially cod and turbot but also now wrasse) from the then laboratory scale to fully commercial levels
• We have since developed a shellfish hatchery operation, again taking it from an initial experimental level to it present commercial scale
• We are thus no strangers to kinds of problems that are inevitably involved in taking any technology from pilot to a fully commercial scale
• I will today therefore try to outline the constraints to large scale commercial seaweed seedling production, as we see them, and how we have been tackling those constraints
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