Where infected fish have a far lower selling price due to the lesions the parasites cause, sea lice can also kill salmon. Anymore than 3 lice on an infant fish and 10 lice on a mature fish can be fatal. Once sea lice thresholds have been exceeded, regulation requires fish farmers to undertake some form of sea lice removal treatment. Estimates of yearly losses caused to global salmon farmers run as high as $1 billion (€880 million).

We at Atlantic Photonics Solution are developing a photonic based solution ‘Photolicer’ that will remove 99% of the sea lice from salmon with no adverse effects on the fish. Successful development and commercialisation of Photolicer will reduces the salmon mortality to below 1% as opposed to 8-20% when using alternative treatments resulting in direct savings of €105,000 per pen. With an average Irish salmon farm having 10 pens, this enables savings of €1,050,000 per farm.