A metal fish sculpture outside one of the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) buildings. The Ireland university will host next year's Gill Health Initiative workshop.

Venue and date announced for 2025 Gill Health Initiative workshop

Editorial team
Published

The Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway, Ireland, will host the 2025 edition of the Gill Health Initiative workshop on April 23 and 24, organisers said today.

While sea lice remain a constant problem for salmon farmers, compromised gill health, which can be the result of several combined or individual factors, is probably the biggest challenge facing salmon farmers today.

The Gill Health Initiative (GHI), which held its first workshop at the University of Stirling in 2013, was formed in a bid to bring together the salmon farming industry and researchers, with the following goals:

  • Focus on key research areas that will inform best practice management of gill disease
  • Focus on sharing of field-based farm management practices for more complex gill diseases
  • Promotion of exchange between researchers and industry for faster information sharing
  • Streamline research efforts across Norway, Scotland, Ireland and Australia

Workshops were held annually for the first six years of the initiative but are now held biennially in either Scotland, Norway, or Ireland. The last workshop, in 2023, was hosted by the Norwegian Veterinary Institute in Oslo.

Abstracts and PDFs of talks from the Oslo workshop can be downloaded from the GHI website, which also has a registration page for next year’s event. Cost of the event is US $150 per ticket.

The Atlantic Technological University was formally established on 1 April 2022 as a merger of three existing institutes of technology – Galway-Mayo IT, IT Sligo, and Letterkenny IT.

gill disease atlantic technological university gill health initiative salmon farming ireland news