The Aquaculture Research Group at the University Institute of the ULPGC will present a lecture by Professor David Domínguez, five oral presentations by Antonio Gómez-Mercader, Álvaro Lorenzo Felipe, Marina Martínez Soler, Luis Molina-Roque and David Domínguez himself, and seven scientific posters in which Félix Acosta, Raquel Quirós, Gabriela Duque Llerandi, Nicolás Cabrera, Rafael Ginés and Pedro L. Castro will also participate
Eleven researchers from the Aquaculture Research Group (GIA) at the ECOAQUA University Institute of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) will take part in the 20th National Aquaculture Congress (CNA), organised by the Spanish Aquaculture Society (SEA) in collaboration with all aquaculture research and training bodies in Galicia, will be held from Monday 1 June to Thursday 4 June at the Afundación headquarters in the Galician city of Vigo (Pontevedra), bringing together more than 200 researchers and experts in the sector.
ECOAQUA’s participation in this biennial event, one of the most significant in the aquaculture sector, will include a keynote speech, five oral scientific presentations and seven scientific sessions featuring the display of seven posters.
The 20th National Aquaculture Congress (CNA) in Vigo, which follows on from the previous National Aquaculture Congress held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in June 2024 – an event organised in collaboration with ECOAQUA’s GIA – will have the theme ‘Back to our roots’ and will be, according to the SEA, a “meeting point and link between researchers, government and industry, to raise awareness of the R&D&I being carried out in the sector, give it a boost and foster future collaborations that address these challenges”.
File photo of fish farming tanks at the Taliarte Marine Science and Technology Park.
The participation of researchers from ECOAQUA’s GIA will begin on Wednesday 3 June with the presentation ‘Can aquaculture produce the Omega-3s the world needs?’, given by Professor David Domínguez, an international expert in aquaculture. It will take place between 9.00 am and 11.00 am at the ‘Food and Nutrition 2’ round table in the Afundación Auditorium, moderated by David Domínguez himself and by Francisco Javier Alarcón from the University of Almería.
Researcher David Domínguez during a research project.
Producing more omega-3: a challenge for improving human health
In his presentation, Domínguez will discuss how aquaculture, through various technological innovations, “has doubled the availability of aquatic products in just over 30 years”, reaching 136 million metric tonnes by 2023, surpassing the 92 million tonnes from capture fisheries. This growth has been accompanied by improvements in food security and a significant reduction in malnutrition in countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt and Brazil, where the sector “has grown most strongly”.
Domínguez will also highlight the nutritional value of these foods, particularly due to their long-chain omega-3 content, which is key to cardiovascular health and the prevention of other diseases. Although 100 grams a day can meet basic requirements in many cases, “especially for those from aquaculture, which contain more omega-3 than their wild-caught counterparts”, farmed sea bream requires around 250 grams to meet health recommendations, compared to 600 grams from wild-caught fish.
For this reason, the researcher will emphasise that aquaculture “will be essential” to meet future demand for a global population of 8.3 billion people, estimating that more than 1.5 million tonnes per year would be needed to address health needs given the high incidence of cardiovascular diseases (32% of annual global mortality is due to such diseases (2023)). In this regard, he explains, “although aquaculture has increased the production of these long-chain nutrients by 70% compared to that of fishery products, there is still an annual shortfall of nearly half a million tonnes”.
Scientific presentations
Between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, several ECOAQUA researchers will present advances aimed at making aquaculture production more sustainable, efficient and respectful of animal welfare. The presentations cover topics ranging from alternative models to animal experimentation to strategies for genetic improvement, functional feeding and nutritional supplementation.
At Wednesday’s ‘Animal Science and New Technologies’ session, Antonio Gómez-Mercader will present a study on SAF-1 cell spheroids as an alternative model to animal testing in aquaculture. His work stems from the need to reduce the use of fish in research and argues that three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures “represent a very promising tool, as they mimic the functioning of living tissues more realistically than traditional cell cultures”.
“In this study, spheroids were developed from sea bream fin fibroblasts (SAF-1) with the aim of creating a useful and reliable in vitro model for aquaculture research, thereby helping to reduce the need to use animals in experimental trials,” adds the researcher.
GIA researcher Antonio Gómez Mercader.
During the same time slot, at the ‘Reproduction and Genetic Improvement’ session, Álvaro Lorenzo Felipe will present a comparative analysis of the genetic resistance of the white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) to three highly impactful pathogens: white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) and IHHNV.
GIA researcher Álvaro Lorenzo Felipe.
The results of the scientific study, carried out as part of the PMG–BIOGEMAR® programme in Ecuador, show that the relationship between disease resistance and growth depends on the pathogen, which opens the door to multi-trait selection strategies tailored to health risks in order to “simultaneously improve robustness and productivity under industrial farming conditions”, says the researcher.
At the same session, Marina Martínez Soler will address the relationship between growth and quality in white shrimp. Her research, based on 976 randomly selected specimens from the PMG-BIOGEMAR® programme, phenotyped for meat quality, texture, colour and morphological quality traits and genotyped using the SNP-Array (AQUAarray LDTM), reveals that many of these traits have low or moderate heritabilities, but with medium-to-high and positive genetic correlations for product quality and growth traits.
GIA researcher Marina Martínez Soler.
“Therefore, indirect genetic selection based on weight emerges as a non-invasive approach that would improve the quality of frozen prawn products in line with consumer preferences,” notes the researcher, who also points out at the same time, that the IMASHRIMP system, designed as part of the project and combining deep learning and computer vision to automatically measure animal morphology, “significantly reduces labour costs and sampling time for prawn producers”.
On Thursday 4 June, at the ‘Food and Nutrition 3’ session, Luis Molina-Roque will present a study on diets supplemented with extracts of terrestrial by-products and low-value marine biomass in sea bream (Sparus aurata) post-larvae. The research explores sustainable functional ingredients in aquaculture feed, such as extracts from pomegranate by-products and the microalga Rhodomonas lens, applied to sea bream (Sparus aurata) post-larvae, “a particularly sensitive stage of development in which nutrition can have a key impact on the fish’s robustness and ability to cope with stressful situations”, and concludes that these diets do not alter growth or survival, but do modulate physiological and transcriptomic parameters related to metabolism and cellular response.
GIA researcher Luis Molina-Roque giving a presentation at an aquaculture conference.
The study, Molina-Roque argues, “highlights the potential of agri-food by-products and low-value marine biomass as sources of bioactive compounds with applications in aquaculture. Overall, this research provides new evidence on the use of functional nutritional strategies to improve larval robustness from a more sustainable approach aligned with the principles of the circular economy and One Health”.
At the same session, David Domínguez will present an evaluation of calcifediol supplementation in diets for juvenile sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). His research addresses a growing concern: the replacement of marine ingredients with plant-based alternatives in feed has increased the need for vitamin supplementation, including vitamin D. Based on this study, “calcifediol (25 OH D?) supplementation ‘prevents the first hydroxylation of cholecalciferol and could improve its bioavailability, although its use in Mediterranean marine species has been little evaluated’,” he asserts.
In this study, 600 fish distributed across 15 tanks were fed for 113 days on five experimental diets that differed only in their calcifediol levels (<2.0; 21.6; 53.5; 102.6 and 169.8 ppb). In the researcher’s words, “although the results showed no significant differences in various parameters such as growth or feed efficiency between treatments, survival, following bacterial challenge with the pathogen Vibrio harveyi (a common pathogen in sea bass farms), showed significant improvements with a maximum protective effect at intermediate levels (21.6–53.5 ppb), suggesting that supplementation improves the fish’s resilience to pathogens”.
Scientific poster sessions
David Domínguez will also be presenting, in the ‘Feed and Nutrition’ section, one of the seven scientific posters that will round off ECOAQUA’s participation in the 20th CNA, to be held in Vigo. The poster is entitled ‘Optimal levels of vitamin D? in sea bass (Argyrosomus regius): effects on growth, survival, biochemical composition, fatty acid profile and skeletal abnormalities’, a study by the GIA and the International Masters in Aquaculture at Ghent University, authored by Domínguez, Ángela Ortega, Daisy Muriuki, Jasmina Hadzibulic and Sara Ramírez-Bolaños.
GIA researcher Gabriela Duque.
In this field, Gabriela Duque Llerandi will present the poster ‘Effects of processed soya on the growth, biochemical composition and gene expression in sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)’, authored by Gabriela Duque Llerandi herself, as well as Pedro Castro Alonso and Rafael Ginés Ruiz, coordinator of the GIA, and which forms part of the MICROBIOME4SOY project (HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-01, Project: 101083671), which studies the microbiome associated with soya cultivation and its impact on various fields such as aquaculture, with a particular focus on how different types and processed forms of soya influence the gut microbiome of species such as sea bass. Preliminary results regarding zootechnical performance and health will be presented.
Rafael Ginés, researcher and coordinator of the GIA.
GIA researcher Pedro L. Castro.
In the ‘Animal welfare, stress and slaughter’ section, Antonio Gómez-Mercader will present ‘Development and characterisation of 3D spheroids from the E-11 (Channa striata) as an alternative model for virology studies in fish’, based on a study co-authored by the researcher himself, alongside researchers Daniel Montero, Félix Acosta, as well as Abdalla Mohammed Selim Mohammed and Alvaro Fernández-Montero, also from ECOAQUA’s GIA.
In the session ‘Animal health: pathology’, GIA researcher Félix Acosta will present two posters: ‘Development of a multi-parameter scoring system for the selection of probiotics in sole (Solea solea)’ and ‘Evaluation of the in vitro immunomodulatory properties of extracellular metabolites from marine Bacillus strains for use in aquaculture’, authored by the researcher himself, along with Luis Monzón-Atienza, Antonio Gómez-Mercader and Nicolás López-Guerrero, also from the GIA, as well as Mouna Jlidi, Eya Frikha, Zouhour Said, Sana Bardaa, Asmahen Akremi, Manel Ben Ali, Adel Hadj Brahim and Mamdouh Ben Ali, from the Laboratory of Microbial Biotechnology, Enzymatics and Biomolecules (LBMEB) and Astrum Biotech, Business Incubator, affiliated with the Centre of Biotechnology of Sfax (CBS), University of Sfax (Tunisia).
GIA researcher Félix Acosta.
In the session ‘Epidemiology; prevention and control; microbial interactions’, Nicolás Cabrera Guerle will present ‘Functional characterisation and genomic features of Paenibacillus polymyxa SABE1: a new probiotic candidate for marine aquaculture’, authored by: Nicolás Cabrera Guerle, Mouna Jlidi, Jimena Bravo, Antonio Gómez Mercader, Daniel Montero, Nicolás Guerrero López, José Ramos Vivas, Luis Monzón Atienza and Félix Acosta.
In the ‘Sustainability and Climate Change’ section, GIA researcher Raquel Quirós will present the poster ‘Utilisation of the invasive macroalga Caulerpa racemosa as a sustainable ingredient in aquaculture feed’, authored by Quirós herself, Sara Ramírez, Charles Elie Jouan and Lidia Robaina.
GIA researcher Raquel Quirós.
The SIRENA project, in which ECOAQUA is participating, will also be featured in another poster to be presented by Luis Yubero Lozoya, from the CSIC and the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineering at the UPM.
The programme of presentations and scientific sessions by researchers from ECOAQUA’s GIA can be viewed at the following link: https://www.ecoaqua.eu/sites/ecoaqua1214/img/PROGRAMA-ECOAQUA-EN-EL-CNA-VIGO-2026.pdf