In Newport, the Marine Institute operates a comprehensive range of freshwater salmonid fish rearing facilities. These facilities comprise a broodstock holding pond, two isolated hatchery units for egg incubation and hatching and indoor and outdoor rearing tanks for on-growing in biosecure locations. The rearing facilities have supported a wide range of both commercial and research and development projects on brown trout, rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon.
The facilities are central to the ongoing salmon ranching programme which involves the release of groups of micro-tagged salmon smolts and the recovery of adults in the fish traps on their return. Reared smolts derived from Burrishoole grilse have been released into the system since 1956 but it was not until 1964 that sufficient adults were available to establish a breeding population. Since that time adult returns from reared smolts have been used to establish the line-bred Burrishoole ranched stock (see Salmon Ranching Census).
Recent collaborative projects have included:
- Determining the scale of biologically important local adaptation at small geographical scales in Atlantic salmon and brown trout, using a common garden experimental approach (Marine Institute, Beaufort Genetics Group)
- Examining the impacts of atrazine and brominated flame retardants on the run timing and coastal movements of salmon smolts (Marine Institute, CEFAS)
- Characterisation of gene expression profiles during key life stages of Atlantic salmon using functional genomics tools (Marine Institute, NUIG)