Researchers have succeeded in nurturing a small snail called periwinkles in the laboratory for the very first time and are hoping that this French delicacy might be the launch pad for a new, Norwegian aquaculture business.
"There are currently no periwinkle farms anywhere on the planet," says Andreas Hagemann, who works at the Norwegian science institute SINTEF Ocean. He's leading SINTEF's research efforts in this field."People go out and gather the mollusks along the shoreline. But many of the conditions needed for commercial farming are now in place," he says.
It is still a rare event to find periwinkles on Norwegian menus, but they are a very popular delicacy in France, Spain and Portugal, especially at Christmas. The British also like to nibble on these tiny mollusks with their pints in the pub. Periwinkles have been transformed from an everyday food to something of an exclusive delicacy. The price per kilo for living periwinkles is currently about the same as that for salmon.
"Together with exporters Statsnail and facility designers Nofitech, we obtained funding from the Regional Research Fund for Mid-Norway to finance a study looking into not only how we might create artificial environments that would encourage the periwinkles to reproduce, but also into how their eggs could be harvested, matured and hatched into larvae.
After settling on the bottom, the larvae metamorphose into adult periwinkles with hard shells. The process from hatching to the development of adults that attach themselves to the substrate takes about a month.Periwinkles have a powerful foot that protrudes from the shell and is used for mobility. The foot is equipped with a rough, rasping, tongue-like structure that the periwinkle uses to obtain plankton from the biofilm that covers the rocks on which it lives.
"It all seems very promising for periwinkle farming in Norway," he says."As well as producing an invaluable food resource, farming will reduce the pressure on wild populations. One of the benefits of aquaculture is that it is possible to produce and supply food all year round," he says.Jon Eirik Brennvall, who is owner and General Manager at Statsnail, believes that the prospects for periwinkle farming are exciting.
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