Rouages: “Maintaining a healthy environment to produce organic produce”
Lauriane Bisch is an aquaculturist at the Ifremer station in Palavas-les-Flots. Every day, she feeds, cares for, and maintains six to seven thousand zebrafish and medaka, model organisms whose eggs will be used for research. She explains this work in detail in the video series *Rouages*, produced by the University of Montpellier. Action!
Since January 2024, Lauriane Bisch has traded the lagoon of Tahiti for the lagoon of Palavas. Snuggled up in the cafeteria at the Ifremer station, with a view of the Prévost Pond swept by the February winds, the animal experimentation technician tells us about her return home after eight years at Ifremer’s Pacific branch. “I started by earning a DUT in biological engineering in Montpellier, then a BTS in aquaculture in Brittany. I dreamed of training in pearl farming, so I went straight to Tahiti, where I was lucky enough to be hired by Ifremer.”
“Wear a T-shirt all year round!”
It was then life itself that led the young woman to move closer to her home region. “We can’t complain—here, too, we work in a beautiful setting, and in the model fish room, we wear T-shirts all year round!”About 40 square meters, a room temperature of 25 or 26 degrees, and shelves everywhere filled with aquariums where thousands of small fish swim about. “On the right are the medaka, found in Asia and native to estuaries. They live in brackish water that is slightly less salty than seawater, but is still saltwater. On the left are the zebrafish, which live in tropical environments but in freshwater.”
Every morning, Lauriane Bisch cleans and checks the condition of dozens of tanks using connected multiparameter sensors that provide her with real-time data on water temperature, nitrite levels, salinity, pH, and more…“It’s a tool we use extensively to check water quality at any given moment. The goal is to keep them in a healthy environment so we have biological material for experiments.”And the biological material in question is the eggs she collects every day from the bottom of the tanks. Because the fish she raises are broodstock not intended for animal experimentation. “It’s their offspring that will be used by researchers at different stages of their lives, ranging from the embryonic stage to the juvenile and even adult stages.”
“Like a dog happy to see you”
Looking at the dates marked on the aquariums, we see that in the model fish room, the oldest individuals can be up to 5 years old. This allows them to form special bonds with their caretaker, who, in addition to keeping them in a healthy environment, feeds and cares for them every day.“It’s important to me to work with animals. Since they’re fish, people assume there’s no interaction, but when it’s time to feed or clean them, they all swim to the front of the tank. It’s kind of like coming home and having a dog that’s happy to see you.”
While she may be the sole expert on medaka and zebrafish populations, there are five animal breeders working at the Ifremer station in Palavas-les-Flots. Alongside Lauriane Bisch’s small fish are larger, more iconic species of the Mediterranean ecosystem, such as sea bream and, above all, sea bass. The Palavas facility is home to more than 500 live broodstock, maintained and bred to produce wild and selected strains. “We zootechnicians don’t conduct research, but through the work we do every day, we also help advance science.”