Research infrastructure for wild fish stocks

The research infrastructure for wild fish stocks provides a wide range of resources to support research on wild fish stocks. Research topics include among others migratory fishes. In addition, the research infrastructure is used to collect both biological and socio-economic data for the EU Data Collection Framework (DCF) in the fishery sector.

• River Tenojoki, River Näätämöjoki and River Tuulomajoki
• Underwater research and measuring devices
• Electric fishing gear and related equipment
• Boats, fishing equipment
• Fish handling facilities
• Fish ageing equipment

• Pre-treatment and measurement facilities for otoliths and scales.

• River Torniojoki, River Kemijoki and other water bodies in the northern region
• boats and equipment on the platform

• Gulf of Finland, Southern Archipelago Sea, River Kokemäenjoki (ARIS, eel migration monitoring system).
• fish processing facility (sampling, measuring, weighing) for catch samples collected in the Gulf of Finland under the EU data collection programme (EU-DCF) 
• equipment of the research vessel Aranda
• seal deterrent research equipment
• pre-treatment and measurement facilities 
• boats and equipment on board

The otolith laboratory is a working space located in the Biocentre 3 building in Viikki, in the Department of Aquatic Sciences at the University of Helsinki. The otolith laboratory processes about 5000 herring and 2000 whitefish otoliths for dissection each year. Occasionally, other fish species such as perch, pike perch and trout are also cut. The age samples of herring are photographed using EDF and stored in the Suomu database, from which the age is read by an age-determiner from the downloaded images.

In addition, the otolith laboratory processes the age-sampled teeth from Luke's seal studies into slices for age determination. Around 300 seal samples are processed each year. The same method can be used to process teeth from other mammals, for example, reindeer, moose, deer and roe deer.

Equipment:

• four drawers
• display cabinet with exhaust
• Struers Accutom 100 precision saw
• Zeiss AX10 microscope camera with ZenCore 3.2 imaging software

• Southern river basin management areas (Kokemäenjoki, Kymijoki, Vuoksi)
• boats and equipment on the platform

• Archipelago Sea and Southern Bothnian Sea
• intensive marine monitoring of fish
• pre-treatment and measurement facilities
• boats and rubber boats, electric fishing equipment, fishing gear, nets, nets, diving equipment
• sonar and cameras, fish tagging equipment

• The Gulf of Bothnia and the coastal and marine areas of the Bothnian Sea ( river deltas, flads and bays)
• pre-treatment and measurement facilities
• boats and equipment on board

• Bothnian Sea, River Simojoki, River Iijoki, River Oulu and Lake Oulu
• pre-treatment and measurement facilities
• boats and equipment on the platform