Search for a command to run...
Seafood is the third largest export industry in Norway and fisheries and aquaculture accounts for 5% of the national export. Aquaculture is an important business in our rural coastal areas. Accordingly, for Norway it is essential to have an efficient early warning and monitoring system for harmful algae blooms in order to implement mitigation actions and saving values and the environment. Through the nine years “history” of the “Water quality monitoring of the North Sea, Kattegat and Skagerrak” service provided by Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre service for Norwegian waters implies the build up of a strong relation and confidence between the users and the provider. Both the technical skill in producing the information products, their presentation and dissemination as well as the regional knowledge in order to produce the correct assessment of the state of the environment are important service elements.<br> The data provided by the NERSC MarCoast service is assessed daily by its users through the web-access the updated information products. The value of the service is first full materialized when a harmful algae bloom occurs and is early detected and that actions can be implemented according to contingency plan of the authorities and by the industry itself. During the regular monitoring mode the direct benefit is less visible, however a continuous monitoring is required by the authorities and expected by the industry.<br> The natural variability of algae blooms during early spring to fall 2007 were monitored daily. No major harmful blooms causing significant losses to the Norwegian aquaculture industry were detected during Phase 2 of the project. At least three periods of alert algae bloom situations/events have been identified and notified to the aquaculture authorities (Directorate of Fisheries) and to the industry (Norwegian Seafood Federation) through posting messages at the web-site and via direct mail to 50 core users. However, neither of these blooms reached the Norwegian coastal waters, or caused any major problems to Norwegian aquaculture sites. One local bloom in a fjord caused recently the attention of our users and the loss of 135 tons of salmon.