Larval Culture Innovation

The National Lobster Hatchery’s never ending quest to improve juvenile lobster production.

At the National Lobster Hatchery, we are always looking for ways to improve our marine conservation methods, in particular our lobster stock enhancement programme. One way in which we are doing this is to improve our lobster culture techniques through research and innovation.

Believe it or not, much of the technology for rearing baby lobsters has not changed since the 1970’s and 80’s when methods for culturing American lobsters were transferred to the European lobster. However, much of the production process has changed dramatically. Over the years our research team has looked at many things like diet, disinfection protocols and water quality parameters to try and improve survival rates of our lobster larvae and juveniles, with the end goal of increasing the number of lobsters we release into the wild.

The old conical-shaped larval tanks used in the Hatchery during the first decade of culture.

In recent months our wonderful technical and research staff have been working on a brand new concept for the design of the tanks which the larvae spend the first 14 days of their lives in. This aspect of lobster culture is one of the things that has remained the same for decades. Larvae have always been reared in large conical-shaped vessels. The reason for this, is that the shape of the vessel means the seawater moves in such a way to keep larvae in suspension, which is essential during the rearing process.

With help from the design departments of Falmouth University and the University of Plymouth, we have come up with a vessel design which is loosely based on the design of a kreisel tank used to grow and keep jellyfish. The idea being that, the shape of the tank improves fluid movement keeping larvae in the water column in a more gentle motion, preventing larvae from getting damaged, leading to improved survival rates. Last year, the NLH received some funding from the Sea-Changers charity in order to initiate the making of this theoretical design into a reality. With the expertise of Falmouth University, a first prototype was produced using basic materials in order to test flow dynamics. Small plastic particles, the same weight and size as lobster larvae were added to tank on order to understand how they would move within the vessel. Using this methods, modifications were made to the shape of the tank, along with water inflow and outflow  to improve water movements until they were optimal

You may have seen our Kreisel tank when visiting our centre here in Padstow?

The testing of this initial prototype served its purpose and gave us a much better idea of what is needed for the finished design. The next step is to make a fully-functional tank which will enable us to test it with live lobster larvae, in order to compare the survival rates with our current rearing tanks.

Innovation-led research, such as this project are never smooth sailing and require many years of perseverance. It is hoped that when our new tank design is complete and installed into our hatchery, it will greatly increase the health and survival of our  juveniles lobsters, which will have a massive impact on our lobster stock enhancement programme around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.