Fish Health

Cefas advises on a wide range of health and disease related issues in both farmed and wild stocks.

Fish Kills

We have experience in investigating unexplained mortalities in:

• commercial and non-commercial fish stocks
• wild fish and farmed fish populations
• small and large-scale situations

We help establish the cause of fish kills, whether through disease, pollution, toxins or other factors and provide advice on future management and prevention.

Disease Management

We advise on disease control programmes for aquaculture operations.

Our expertise includes:

• implementing and managing monitoring programmes
• assessing the incidence, prevalence and significance of diseases
• contingency planning for disease outbreaks
• risk assessment and mathematical modelling techniques
• predicting the spread and transmission of disease between farmed and wild species
• disease prevention and eradication measures
• application of controls to stop disease import and spread.

Disease Diagnosis

We have an extensive disease diagnosis capability and a wide range of resources for use in diagnostic testing and technique development. 

These resources include:

• expertise in the isolation, cultivation and identification of a wide range of fish pathogens
• specialists in virology, bacteriology, parasitology and histopathology
• state-of-the-art experimental aquarium facilities allowing the impact of any pathogen from anywhere in the world to be studied in safety