Outline of Ecological Studies by Dr Arne J. Jensen

Our research will involve the biological analysis of the contemporary samples collected during the cruises in the targeted marine areas under Work Package 2. It encompasses the determination of growth performance using information from scale analysis, data on body condition, and on stomach contents of captured fish. Also, changes in monthly growth rate at sea will be analysed from time series of salmon from selected rivers. Hence, new information will be available on the different growth patterns, occuring between stocks from different parts of Europe, and these may be traced to particular oceanic areas or particular times of the year. This determination will involve the development of new imaging facilities in key research institutes and the training of researchers. An important part of this major data acquisition task will be ensuring consistency in image interpretation across laboratories and establishing a digital scale image library. In addition biological samples for disease and parasite screening will be collected during the cruises and made available to pathologists for analysis.