Meet the Lab

Aquaculture is an efficient way of producing animal protein, can play an important role in reducing poverty and can alleviate pressures on wild fishery stocks. But expansion of aquaculture is often limited by a lack of knowledge about simple farming practices (including feed and feeding) and the availability of good genetic stocks. Areas available for aquaculture are limited, so we need to make the fish and production more efficient so that more of this healthy food source can be produced per unit area.
My research focuses on making fish and shellfish more productive for aquaculture by developing technologies that can be used to speed genetic improvement with selective breeding. My focus has been on improving the resilience of fish in the aquaculture environment, including: 

• genetic basis for salmon host resistance to sea lice
• genomic selection for improving the disease resistance of rohu carp and tiger shrimp in India
• resilience to summer mortality for abalone in Australia
• design of selective breeding programs for barramundi, abalone and seaweeds
• epigenetic programming to produce robust Atlantic salmon for aquaculture in Norway
• genes associated with cardiovascular fitness (swimming performance) of Atlantic salmon in Norway