Artemia history

The very beginning - 1969

The long history and pioneering role INVE Aquaculture has had in the Artemia business can be traced back all the way to 1969, when a young Professor Patrick Sorgeloos, one of the founding members of the company and now Scientific Manager, came in touch with the laboratory of the late Prof. Julien Fautrez (UGent Faculty of Medicine) whose team was in desperate need of a standard technique for rearing brine shrimp from nauplii to adult Artemia, which was used as an experimental model in their embryology research. As an undergraduate biology student Patrick put his teeth in the matter for his thesis research in the summer of 1969.

After graduating and 2 summer trainings in Marine Biology, he followed another marine biology course program in the summer of 1972 at Duke University (USA). There he learned about the potential role of freshly-hatched Artemia nauplii as an alternative food for live plankton in the larval development of many vertebrate and invertebrate organisms.  

It was however in Ostend, Belgium, in 1975 (where the European Mariculture Society was established) that Professor Sorgeloos drew the attention of senior FAO officer Dr. Herminio Rabanal who promptly invited the young PhD to participate in the first ever, “FAO Technical Conference on Aquaculture” in June 1976 in Kyoto, Japan. The discussions at this conference marked a crucial turning point in the aquaculture business as Patrick dared to challenge the conference chairman’s conclusion “… there is no future for the costly and unpredictable brine shrimp Artemia in aquaculture, especially in 3rd world countries, and the scientific community should develop alternatives for Artemia”. In contrast to mainstream opinions, Patrick Sorgeloos claimed that the critical shortage of Artemia was in fact artificial and could -and would- be remedied by applying the innovative techniques developed at Ghent University.

Breakthrough in Artemia consumption

Within the next year the government of Brazil and later the South East Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) offered Patrick a chance to demonstrate his findings, and with great success: within 6 months following the artificial inoculation of San Francisco Bay Artemia into the solar salt works, the first tons of top-quality Artemia cysts were harvested and less than a year later the first kilograms of cysts were produced in seasonal salt ponds in the Philippines.

This breakthrough quickly generated renewed confidence in the potential of Artemia as the ultimate source of live food for use in aquaculture. By the end of the ‘70s several new sources of Artemia were discovered and/or exploited, and several Artemia inoculation projects were set up in Thailand, India and Indonesia. Artemia was put back on the map and has remained there ever since: from a yearly consumption of less than 1 metric ton in the mid-seventies, Artemia cyst use is now estimated at more than 3,000 tons annually.

The birth of the "Artemia Reference Center"

Encouraged by the first results obtained by Patrick and his team, the same FAO that earlier advocated in the Kyoto conference to abandon Artemia, now suggested Ghent University to set up a reference center for Artemia studies and characterisation, which resulted in the creation of the “Artemia Reference Center” (ARC) in May 1978. 

International Study on Artemia

Simultaneously a new problem arose: while the supply of Artemia seemed to be remedied by the availability of several new cyst sources, it became apparent that the food value of different sources of Artemia could be dramatically different. Patrick formed a team within the ARC that together with scientists in Japan, Europe and the USA formed the “International Study on Artemia” ISA. This interdisciplinary cooperation programme among research groups from Belgium, UK, USA, Italy and Spain was to study Artemia source-related differences.

Philippe Léger and the SELCOs

The ARC team combined various disciplines including biologists, engineers and a pharmacologist, Philippe Léger, now Managing Director of INVE Aquaculture, who together with the colleagues of The ISA documented that nutritional deficiency in one or more critical components determines the (ultimate) food value of freshly-hatched Artemia nauplii for the larvae of fish and shellfish species. This finding introduced a new challenge as to how to manipulate the biochemical composition of Artemia prior to offering it to the predator organisms. Thus, the introduction of knowledge of “pharmaceutical techniques” (through the PhD study in 1987 of Philippe Léger) for making stable emulsions and innovative formulations eventually resulted in the development of legendary SELCO (Self-Emulsifying Concentrates), which facilitated numerous nutritional studies across the world and are nowadays still viewed as the benchmark for enrichments.

Bio-encapsulation

The procedure of improving the nutritional value of Artemia for its predators by stuffing it with these self-emulsifying products is known as “enrichment or bio-encapsulation”. This convenient use of Artemia (and later applied as well with the rotifer Brachionus) as a vector - in early larval development of fish and shellfish - for nutrients and eventually other target compounds (e.g. pigments, oral vaccines, immunostimulants, hormones). This principle, applied on Artemia and later on rotifers, is generally and undoubtedly acknowledged as one of the main breakthroughs which have enabled the commercial development of marine fish larviculture.

Artemia Systems NV and the birth of INVE Aquaculture

 

Upon recommendation and with the assistance of the Flemish Investment Company GIMV, a joint-venture company named “Artemia Systems NV” was set up in 1983 as a Ghent University spin-off in order to commercialise the enrichment products developed by the ARC. These experimental products were at the origin of the very successful SELCO range of commercial formulations applied in the commercial rearing of billions of fish and shellfish in temperate and tropical climates. In 1991, “Artemia Systems NV” was acquired by the INVE group, who recognized the company’s huge potential. This marked the birth of INVE Aquaculture as we know it today. As of the early ‘90s, and still today, numerous graduates and staff of the ARC have taken up leading positions in INVE companies across the world.