We are now harvesting tunicates, Ciona intestinalis, from our aquaculture facilities in the Bergen archipelago. After a long winter it is finally spring, and our aquaculture workers can say that there is plenty of life in the sea at the moment. There are lots of tiny fish who are happy to get some snacks from our harvesting process, and when we are washing our nets. Our tunicates have released their eggs and their young ones are looking for a place to settle. Spring is such a wonderful time with new life emerging. We have had our operations there for over 10 years, and we can see how clear the water is thanks to our hard working tunicates who filter the water column to reduce any eutrophication.
We will now take a break from harvesting and let the settlement of young Ciona continue to yield a healthy new population of tunicates. Did you know that Ciona intestinalis is a model organism to study evolutionary developmental biology? Their genome is sequenced and there is a rich toolbox of molecular and cell biology assays to study them. Ocean TuniCell is committed to help the research field and you can now order live Ciona intestinalis in our webshop for your research, under “biological resource service”.
