Photo: Trygve Poppe Sea cages are used for farming of Atlantic salmon. The Norwegian fjords are well-suited for this purpose as they are deep and provide shelter against harsh weather conditions.

 

You can read more about the teaching of aquatic medicine at the School under Basic Sciences.

 

And presentation of some research activities can be found here.

Research

The Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (NVH) carries out extensive research in the field of aquatic medicine such as, for example, projects on contagious viral diseases like infectious pancreas necrosis (IPN) and infectious salmon anaemia (ISA). Researchers at NVH are also employed in the characterisation of genes and in functional studies of central immune molecules, the development of DNA and peptid vaccines, inflammation processes and productional-related diseases.

Within the field of virus infections in species of salmon, research at NVH has particularly been aimed at investigating the causes behind the ablity of the virus to cause disease and at studying the interaction between the virus and the immune system of fish.

Through different research projects financed by The Research Council of Norway, NVH has, for the first time ever, been able to show that differences between virus isolators' ablity to kill fish can be explained by distinct genetical differences between isolators. Correspondingly, it has been shown that the the development of the disease to a large extent is influenced by the genetical composition of the fish.

As a participant in Aquaculture Protein Centre, Centre of Excellence, www.nlh.no/apc/  researchers at NVH investigate the reasons why soya in fish food cause damage in the intestine in species of salmon.

As part of NVH's focus on aquatic medicine a research group has been established, in a joint effort by NVH and the Veterinary Institute (VI). The aim of the group is to increase awareness among researchers at the Adamstuen campus in fish disease, to strengthen research cooperation and to increase the visibility of the research within aquatic medicine both nationally and internationally.

The group consists of about 100 persons representing a diversity of subjects such as clinical diagnosis, bacteriology, virology, parasitology, pharmacology, genetics and pathology. The group is headed by a steering committee of three researchers from NVH and VI. The group has created their own web pages in English: www.aquamedicine.no