Within the past decade, harmful phytoplankton blooms have compromised the health of fish at a number of salmon farms in southwest New Brunswick. An ACRDP collaborative project between Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the aquaculture industry was undertaken in 2004 to look at a monitoring approach that would provide an early warning of a potentially harmful algal event. The objectives were to determine the feasibility and need for high-frequency sampling and to design a cost-effective operational approach for phytoplankton monitoring. Industry partners were trained in the collection, identification, and enumeration of potentially harmful phytoplankton species that might cause problems for the salmon. Phytoplankon samples collected from 4 sites during2004-05 were analysed by trained personnel at salmon farms and a comparison with results from analyses done by staff at the Biological Station is presented, as well as analyses of spatial and temporal characteristics of existing phytoplankton monitoringdata. In 2004, a number of salmon farms were affected when Alexandrium fundy'ense, the organism responsible for producing paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), bloomed at densities exceeding 3 million cells L~1. The ability of the industry to analyse additional water samples provided an opportunity to mitigate some of the bloom effects and reduce the number offish mortalities.
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