Representatives of the animal world are surrounded by a horde of insects that parasitize almost all the inhabitants of the planet. Sea lice are a subspecies of ectoparasites, those who live outside the body of the animal. The most famous are whale and salmon.
From the point of view of fish farming in ponds (aquaculture), freshwater parasites seem to be the most dangerous.
Marine parasitofauna is diverse, as are the inhabitants of the seas. There are parasites-parasites who do not need a certain type of marine animals, there are those who prefer only one "master". Only two such sea crustaceans are called lice.
Whale parasitic sea louse
Whale louse (Cyamidae) is a crustacean creature from the order of amphipods.
This is a fairly large creature ranging in size from ten to twelve millimeters, which leads a parasitic lifestyle, attaching itself to the skin of whales (with special pleasure in the area of the anal and genital openings) and eating their blood. Bite ulcers can be quite large and painful.
Salmon louse
Lepeophtheirus salmonis - lepeophtheirus salmonis - a crustacean creature that belongs to the subclass of copepods (copepods), is part of the order Siphonostomatoida. Lives only in sea water. Attached to the wild species of salmon in the ocean, it disappears from the host body as soon as the fish enters the freshwater zone to spawn.
The abundance of lepeofteirus Salmonis in sea waters is naturally regulated, like everything in nature. This parasite poses a danger to fish at the junction of the artificial breeding of salmon in sea water and the passage of wild fish.
Salmon spawns in fresh water, then fry get out into the sea, there they feed, mature, grow fat, then go back to the place of birth in freshwater rivers.
For artificial breeding, plots of seawater owned by farmers are located, as a rule, in those waters where salmon can grow, or where it passes to fresh water.
Sea lice, whose photos on fish are quite numerous, do not care who the parasite is, but preference is given, naturally, to the most vulnerable from the point of view of the bite of the skin - fry. And if the body size of copepod in the case of a large individual does not matter, then the fry are very vulnerable.
And if you consider that in the "cages", where salmon should be fed for two years, the fish live almost close to each other, then from weakened immunity, against which all kinds of viral diseases occur, up to eighty percent of the livestock die (according to the Norwegian and British companies, the statistics of Russian households is unknown - either due to their small size, or simply being silent).
The worst thing is that it is impossible to completely get rid of this scourge - sea lice of salmon fish -. It remains to hope for preventive measures.
How to kill salmon sea lice?
Scientists involved in the parasitofauna of fish consider the simplest way to kill infected fish by burning the most successful way. This is a very expensive method. Naturally, all fish farms do not budget such expenses. When the proceeds are only from sales, you cannot get a loan for the destruction of fish. No commercial bank can afford this. In such a situation, it is easier for farms to leave infected cages alone, hoping that the lice themselves will be destroyed. And then it becomes clear why in the northern seas, the salmon sea louse multiplies more and more.
Many foreign companies immediately detect fish infection, when there are only a few such individuals in cages. This serves as a signal for treating the fish with antibiotics, pesticides, sometimes even fish feeding on the Lepeophtheirus salmonis, of the genus Ballan Wrasse, can even be planted in cages. Of course, all measures are taken to catch infected fish, but parasites breed at a tremendous speed.
What is the danger of infection of fish with parasites of the lepeofteirus Salmonis
In the wild, fishing for salmon does not do without catching fish with parasites. Naturally, the question immediately arises of how dangerous sea lice are for humans and what to do if the parasite crawls.
Workers of fishing vessels engaged in fish processing know that sea lice do not live in a non-native environment (in the air or in fresh water), do not bite a person, and do not tolerate any diseases.
The fish itself from bites loses its presentation. When washing it with fresh water, the parasites are washed off, and during heat treatment even marketability is not lost.
Detection in jars of parasitic crustaceans of this species is an unpredictable accident. Although for the squeamish - this is an occasion to throw away the whole product, but caviar, even in the presence of impurities, does not cease to be useful and tasty. Although, of course, I would like to purchase this product without them.