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CHATTONELLA ALGAE, SALMON - NORWAY EX JAPAN A ProMED-mail post
http://www.promedmail.org>ProMED-mail, a program of the International Society for Infectious Disease
http://www.isid.orgDate: 30 Mar 2001
From: "M. Cosgriff" mcosgriff@hotmail.com
Source: ABC Newswire, 30 Mar 2001 [edited]
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20010330_884.htmOSLO - Poisonous algae off the south coast of Norway, which killed off almost 1000 tons of farmed salmon in the past 2 weeks, now seem to be dying out, a fisheries spokesman said on Friday.
Norway is the world's top producer of Atlantic salmon, farming about 400 000 tons a year. Olav Lekve at the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries estimated [that] the algae, which kill fish by sticking to their gills, had suffocated between 900 and 1000 tons of salmon in the past 2 weeks -- the deadliest attack by the algae in Norway. The previous record was set in May 1998, when algae killed about 800 tons of fish.
Lekve said the directorate expected the algae, believed to be a Japanese strain that first appeared off Norway in 1996, to continue dying out over the next few days. The swathe of microscopic algae, stretching tens of kilometres, had not moved in the last few days and so was not threatening other fish farms. The organisms die out after using up nutrients in the sea unless winds and currents help sweep them to new areas.
Norwegian officials think the so-called chattonella algae, which often bloom in spring, could have come from a vessel that loaded water for ballast off Japan and then flushed out its tanks off Norway. NRK public radio said the Environment Ministry was considering how to prevent ships spreading the algae further by taking aboard contaminated water. One option could be to force vessels to mix water with chlorine, killing any algae.