Fish farming often gets a bad rap. New Brunswick scientist Dr. Amber Garber is working to make farmed salmon and farming processes healthier, more sustainable and more profitable.

She’s doing it by breeding for traits like fast growth rates and improved natural resistance to sea lice and bacterial kidney disease.

“Selective breeding programs use the fishes’ natural genetic variability to make them better,” said the scientist who has been working on this broodstock program since 2010. Broodstock are a group of mature individuals used in aquaculture for breeding purposes.

“The broodstock program is responsibly improving fish. It’s maintaining genetic diversity, helping industry, and using fewer resources. It’s more sustainable.”

The scientist at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre, who was recently recognized at the R3 awards for scientific research, has been living in St. Andrews for 10 years. She previously worked on the Atlantic cod genomics and broodstock development project.

She said that breeding fish for desirable natural qualities helps the industry expand and become more efficient.

“It allows the use of fewer chemicals and antibiotics and increases the quality of the fish,” said the scientist who grew up on a farm in Ohio and learned to love animals while helping her father, a vet.

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By producing a fish that is more resistant to sea lice, for example, the program decreases the number of treatments required, reducing many costs and the stress on fish.

Garber said the combined Nova Scotia and New Brunswick farmed salmon industries are currently worth $356 million annually.

“This equates to over 300 million meals of farmed Atlantic salmon every year and over 3,000 jobs.”

She said the latest generation of salmon in the broodstock program are growing 26 per cent faster than their parents did.

In Norway, where broodstock programs are more developed, farmed Atlantic salmon typically reach the harvest size of four kilograms in less than two years, compared with four years in the 1970s. The fast growth rate means the salmon industrysaves around 120,000 tons of feed annually.

In New Brunswick, Garber and the Huntsman team work with their industry partner Northern Harvest Sea Farms.

The research program is supported by Northern Harvest, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, and Huntsman.

Broodstock programs are not new or unusual, although it’s estimated less than 10 per cent of aquaculture production is based on these stocks.

“Breeding programs add a level of complexity and cost which often makes themseem unattainable, but set up and executed properly the benefits can outweigh these costs.”

Broodstock programs may not be new but winning the R3 Award has brought recognition and validation.

“The win helped boost awareness of the importance of aquaculture,” said Garber.

As a youngster, Garber knew she wanted a career that would make a difference.

She considered cancer research, but later gained a masters in population genetics in stock enhancement.

“I hadn’t done genetics to that point and I liked it, liked working with numbers and statistics,” she said.

“Aquaculture was growing, so I pursued my PhD in that at North Carolina State University.”

She said broodstock programs can also help wild species.

“Depletion of wild fish is a problem. Many commercially harvested species of fish are depleted to some extent…We’re protecting wild fish by shifting pressure from fishing to farming and consumption from wild to farmed. We’re trying to help the industry grow and reduce the environmental footprint…”

She said the Huntsman has recently been contracted by companies in Atlantic Canada and Ontario to design, assess, or complete statistical analysis associated with breeding programs.

“I want to help other industries become more sustainable,” she said. “Other species can all have broodstock programs.”