Newsletter September 2021

Improvement in protocols results in more eel larvae staying alive longer

In the last newsletter, we told about the progress in our feeding trials where larvae are eating more and more often. Of course, this is not the only topic in our facility that is the subject of ongoing research. To improve our protocols, we regularly hire interns who come here to do research during a 4-6 month period. For example, the completed internship of Bart van Rijn (Wageningen University student) has allowed us to improve our fertilization protocol. This means that we can now produce more larvae per eel mother. In addition, our current intern, Niels van Houten (also from Wageningen), is doing research on egg disinfection to prevent pathogens from negatively affecting the development process.

Thanks in part to such research, it is now possible to produce a new batch of larvae every week. A year ago, this was much more difficult and there were periods when we could not consistently have new larvae in our facility. In addition, modifications in the way we treat the larvae have meant that survival of up to 30 days is increasingly being achieved. This is very important for research, because from about day 30 it is easy to see how well the larvae respond to the food. By then they have completely used up the food reserve (yolk) they received from the mother and depend on food intake for further survival.

Finally, we would like to announce that employees Annalena Karyda and Daan Maassen recently graduated from the fish-specific Laboratory Animal Course (LAS) and are now officially qualified to develop and conduct the experiments!