Rock Lobster farming may be set to become a lot less stressful. For years the farming of Rock lobsters has had an extremely high mortality rate but the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) believe they may have found a probiotic cure for the parasite that was wipeing them out.
Dr Lone Hoj is a Micro Bioligist with AIMS and she has been working recently with Rock Lobsters in the laval stage of their development trying to work out what it is that kills them off in aqua farm tanks.
“For a long time there would be mass mortality of lava pretty early on, so there would be a complete crash” Dr Hoj explained
Dr Hoj pointed out that they had noticed a much larger level of bacteria in the water of the aqua farms than there is in the wild and as result disease was spreading. The other noticable difference she said was that the lava have a lot more space in the wild of course.
The most recent discovery however is of a range of bacteria that is found on the rock lobster lava in the wild that is not apearing on the captive bred animals. Dr Hoj is currently experimenting with what is called probiotics in the hope that she will get an understanding of what that missing bacteria is doing to help the wild lava survive and possibly reproduce it. Although she has had a few successful experiments she believes it is too early to say if she has an answer.
In this report: Dr Lone Voj, Micro Bioligist, Australian Institute of Marine Science
