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Salmon production in Canada is under increasing threat from infectious and non-infectious diseases. Over the last decade, gill health and associated diseases have been a growing challenge in salmon aquaculture, particularly in on Canada’s West Coast but also internationally. A conservative estimate of 12,500 tonnes of salmon or $130M in revenue is lost per year directly due to complex gill disease in British Columbia’s salmon aquaculture industry.  

Complex gill disease is a multifactorial condition resulting from the interaction of environmental and husbandry management as well as infection by pathogens and parasites to create proliferative lesions, particularly during the summer and fall months. This three-year project will build on knowledge gained from a previously funded Genome Canada project (Integrated Pathogen Management of Co-infection in Atlantic salmon) and the Gill Health Initiative from the UK. The team aims to validate biomarkers of healthy and compromised gills of Atlantic salmon, develop an early warning system to detect complex gill disease in Atlantic salmon, and assess the efficacy of therapeutic diet-associated protection of gill health in aquaculture facilities. The resulting genomics-enabled tools for fish health will guide the management and intervention strategies to reduce the disease burden of complex gill disease in Atlantic salmon and support the sustainable growth of salmon aquaculture in Canada.