Services

About CSIC: The infrastructure offered by CSIC are located in the campus of the Instituto de Acuicultura de Torre de la Sal (IATS) in Castellón and in Ribera de Cabanes, Castellón (IEO-ICAR-MAP), Spain. The users will be able to develop a research project using highly qualified facilities and having access to a research environment which has proven to be highly productive in the previous AQUAEXCEL and AQUAEXCEL2020 projects.

Users will have the opportunity to consult, have advice and interchange ideas with experts on most of the disciplines in Aquaculture, with notable excellence in marine fish parasites, fish pathology, fish immunology, nutrigenomics, genomics, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology to study and control fish reproduction, food intake and growth, Artemia, and fish larviculture.

IEO-ICAR-MAP consists of two marine aquaculture facilities located in the Region of Murcia devoted to culture Mediterranean species, mainly Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABFT) but also another Mediterranean species like sea bass, sea bream, yellowtail and another Scombrids and Scienidae.

1. The facility for controlling the reproduction of the bluefin tuna has 2 broodstock tanks (20-22m Ø and 9-10 m depth 2,600 and 3,500 m3-) containing 50 ABFT brood fish and 2 juvenile tanks (14 m Ø, 6 m depth -900 m3 - and and 8 m Ø, 3 m depth -150 m3-). Juvenile tanks are devoted to the quarantine, adaptation and ongrowing of fish.

2. The marine aquaculture plant comprises facilities for reproduction, incubation, larval rearing, weaning and ongrowing marine fish species. It includes more than 200 culture units, between 150 l and 100 m3 each, with a total volume of 1,300 m3. It provides automatic systems for controlling biological and physic-chemical parameters, as well as monitoring and control systems for feeding, nutrition and fish behavior by means of self-feeders and video cameras.

IEO-ICAR-MAP aims to develop techniques for juvenile production of bluefin tuna, as well as breeding and juvenile production of other Mediterranean fish species. Main services are related to:

• tuna farming,

• species diversification,

• nutrition and food,

• recirculation systems (RAS)

• and AMTI development,

• animal health,

• welfare and OWIs,

• live prey and larval rearing,

• physiology and behaviour studies and formation and training of technicians on bluefin tuna rearing.

  
  

Support offered

Users will receive access to all necessary equipment, live animals and consumables to complete their research project, as agreed in their access proposal. Use of tanks will include maintenance, water supply, daily feeding, husbandry, manipulation and sampling of fish.

Users will be provided with any necessary technical assistance, training and advice on methodologies, experimental design and data analysis. In addition, users will be trained by highly qualified and experienced technical and scientific personnel on methodologies, experimental design and data analysis.

The access will include assessment by technical and scientific personnel and will depend on the type of project. Remote assistance for in silico and meta-analysis is also envisaged. Users will have the opportunity to consult, have advice and interchange ideas with scientific staff with expertise on most of the disciplines in Aquaculture, with notable excellence in marine fish nutrition and pathology, larviculture and nutritional enrichment of live preys, Artemia biology, fish immunology and biochemistry, and cellular and molecular biology to study and control fish reproduction, food intake and growth from early life stages to completion of production cycles. Thus, users will have the opportunity of learning how to run a project under the best experimental conditions and to apply this knowledge to their own infrastructures back to their countries.

Access to equipment and consumables will be as agreed in the access proposal. Access to transcriptomic and genomic databases will also be provided when agreed. During the stage at infrastructures, users will have access to the full text journals and databases. This will imply a quick and efficient way of acquiring bibliographic information, and more opportunities to discuss the information available and to produce high quality scientific publications.

Users will be integrated in a research group and expected to collaborate in all the research process including report and article writing and publishing. The visiting scientist will receive support for finding accommodation.

Modality of access

The Modality of access is unit.cost and the unit of access are defined as person/weeks - the number of weeks each person in a project is using a set of analytical laboratories for the analyses of samples (IATSANA) or a set of experimental tanks and associated lab units (IATS-EXP and IEO-ICAR-MAP).

For IATS-ANA a typical access consists of 4 units of access, for IATS-EXP it will be 12 units of access, and for IEO-ICARMAP it will consist of 8 units.

CSIC infrastructures will carry out experiments and provide physical access to its facilities during crucial periods of the running experiments. The typical stay for IATS-ANA users are 4 weeks, and for IATS-EXP and IEO-ICAR-MAP each user or user group is expected to stay 2 weeks at the infrastructure distributed at the convenience of the user (typically at the beginning of the experiment to f inalize the technical protocol details and start the experiment and at the end of the experiment for final measurements and sampling).