Timing and probability of arrival for sea lice dispersing between salmon farms

Sea lice are a threat to the health of both wild and farmed salmon and an economic burden for salmon farms. With a free-living larval stage, sea lice can disperse tens of kilometers in the ocean between salmon farms, leading to connected sea lice populations that are difficult to control in isolation. In this paper, we develop a simple analytical model for the dispersal of sea lice between two salmon farms. From the model we calculate the arrival time distribution of sea lice dispersing between farms, as well as the level of cross-infection of sea lice. We also use numerical flows from a hydrodynamic model, coupled with a particle tracking model, to directly calculate the arrival time of sea lice dispersing between two farms in the Broughton Archipelago, BC, in order to fit our analytical model and find realistic parameter estimates. Using the parametrized analytical model we show that there is often an intermediate inter-farm spacing that maximizes the level of cross-infection between ..., , Sea lice particle tracking data for a simulation of sea lice particles released from 20 farms in the Broughton Archipelago, Canada, on May 2, 2009. The output files are stored in netCDF format and so software that can read netCDF files is required to open the data files (R, MATLAB, and others). The associated R code was used to run the analysis in the manuscript. See README.txt file for details.