Introduction
Blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) cultivation largely depends both on seed availability and food from the natural environment and is therefore highly impacted by natural variations in seed and feed supply. Currently, the blue mussel production industry has an over reliance on seed provided by wild harvest or use of suspended collectors for natural settlement of spat . Hatchery produced blue mussel seed has been proposed as a solution to ensure sufficient seed supply and provides the opportunities for selective breeding and possibilities of triploid production giving the product increased added value. However, production of hatchery produced blue mussel seed is challenged by the fact that hatchery produced seed can be prohibitively expensive compared to the actual sale value of harvested mussel seed from the wild . Consequently, further development and optimisation of hatchery produced blue mussel seed is required for the further advancement and implementation at an industry scale in an economic timeframe.
Results and discussion
A protocol for blue mussel hatchery reared seed has been developed in Ireland. The protocol has shown to be successful in a traditional shellfish hatchery setting but is not operational for mussel farmers without access to a hatchery facility . The goal of our research is to implement, adapt and optimise this robust and repeatable protocol to other hatchery conditions and to develop in parallel a low-technological protocol that will be implemented at an industry level, operational by mussel farmers and thereby reduce the overall cost of hatchery produced mussel seed. The presentations will focus on the simplified production, the feeding setup for the larvae rearing as well as the settlement success comparison for commonly used spat collectors by farmers in Denmark vs settling material commonly used in hatchery . The results will be discussed in terms of trade-offs of the two different hatchery protocols and if the low-tech method would be transferable to the farmers as an affordable source of mussel seeds and if it can improve the economic feasibility of hatchery produced blue mussel seed.