Aquaculture is seen as an answer to the future’s projected demand increase of seafood. This offers possibilities for the Finnish society to benefit economically. Globally, environmental concerns are set to the pressure the future demand, since the sector’s production is jointly linked to creating negative outputs, nutrient emissions. These problems are especially present in Finland, which’s offshore aquaculture production occurs geographically in one of the world’s most eutrophicated seas, the Baltic Sea. Finnish aquaculture regulation is currently a type of “command and control”, which is seen as one of the main reasons why the domestic production has decreased drastically in 21st century. Continuing to utilize feed quotas may not sufficient and incentivizing for the producers which creates need to review other possible economic instruments. This research studies the possibility of utilizing auctioned emission permits. The work contributes to auction theory of incomplete information games while adding Baltic Sea elements such as abatement costs to our analyzed model. This thesis addresses three questions: How can the chosen auction models support sustainable growth of aquaculture in economically efficient way? What is the level of optimal price floor? Which auction form is expected to create highest revenue surplus for the society? The policy maker is interested in assessing which of the chosen auction models is best allocation tool under present asymmetrical information. To combat the missing information on production values per kilogram of nitrate, Monte Carlo-simulation is utilized to generate values for the bidding producers. The analysis creates premise of including price floor in the mechanism designs to guarantee sustainability. The price floor guarantees that the value of allocated permit will be at least the size of our adopted abatement costs, which originate from certain mussel cultivation farm located in Sankt Anna, Sweden. The effects of two potential price floors are analyzed. First, which secures sustainability and second, which maximizes expected revenue surplus. Our modelled results follow the findings of the theory. All chosen auction designs are expected to create similar results in allocating the emission permits. To secure that the allocated permits are sustainable, and that the allocation maximize society’s revenue surplus, the social planner should implement price floor which is strictly higher than his personal valuation of the permit. This removes the possibility of auction being ex-ante efficient. Even though in the chosen model setting the price floor’s level was not dependent on the level of buyers, the social planner should not ignore the aspect of competition. By designing a mechanism that enables easy entry for bidders to participate, the auctions are expected to attract higher levels of competition which can create results that are closer to competitive markets. This can decrease the role of price floor, which may ease mechanism designing. To get more accurate results in the Finnish scene, more detailed information on possible domestic aquaculture production values is needed

The eradication of viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus (VHSV Id) from Finnish brackish-water rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss farms located in the restriction zone in the Province of Åland, Baltic Sea, failed several times in the 2000s. The official surveillance programme was often unable to find VHSV-positive populations, leading to the misbelief in the fish farming industry that virus eradication could be achieved. The ability of 3 other surveillance programmes to detect infected fish populations was compared with the official programme. One programme involved syndromic surveillance based on the observation of clinical disease signs by fish farmers, while 2 programmes comprised active surveillance similar to the official programme, but included increased sampling frequencies and 2 additional tests. The syndromic surveillance concentrated on sending in samples for analysis when any sign of a possible infectious disease at water temperatures below 15°C was noticed. This programme clearly outperformed active surveillance. A realtime reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction method proved to be at least as sensitive as virus isolation in cell culture in detecting acute VHSV infections. An ELISA method was used to test fish serum for antibodies against VHSV. The ELISA method may be a useful tool in VHSV eradication for screening populations during the follow-up period, before declaring an area free of infection.

Wild fish were suspected to be the source of reinfection by viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus (VHSV) in Finnish brackish water rainbow trout farms located in a restriction zone regarding viral haemorrhagic septicaemia (VHS) comprising the entire Province of Aland, Baltic Sea, in the 2000s. Altogether, 1636 wild fish of 17 different species living in the vicinity of infected fish farms were screened for VHSV during the years 2005-2008. Additionally, 2 uninfected wild fish species as well as farmed whitefish were introduced into a VHS-positive fish farm to test whether they became infected by VHSV from the clinically diseased rainbow trout. Wild fish did not test positive for VHSV on any occasion. In contrast, whitefish introduced to a VHS-positive farm were infected with VHSV genotype Id and started to replicate the virus for a short time during the trial. Whitefish are farmed together with, or in the vicinity of, farmed rainbow trout in the study area and, according to this study, are a possible source of the recurring infection in the restriction area. A sprivivirus was isolated from all fish species in the infection trial without causing mortality in the test groups.