Summary of a Talking Circle, April 27, St. Andrews, NB
On April 27, fourteen people gathered in St. Andrews, NB to discuss what the 100-year plankton sampling program at a monitoring site in the St. Croix Estuary shows us about the health of the estuary. This was part of a BoFEP project entitled “St. Croix Estuary: An ecological time series 1937-present”, funded by Environment Canada.
This project intent has been to improve understanding of the effects of seawater temperature and other ecosystem parameters on the diversity, concentration, distribution, and phenology of plankton populations in St. Croix Estuary. Participants shared their personal experiences, legends and stories of the St. Croix, especially related to the creatures that live in its waters. This sharing helped to complete the picture of plankton interaction and relationship with climate, fisheries abundance, marine mammal and other environmental events in the area over time.
Contributors identified a number of research opportunities from the presentations made of sampled fish larvae, temperature and salinity from the 100 year time series. The need for predictive modeling to forecast climate and ecosystem change dominated the discussion.
Passamaquoddy is in the “goldilocks zone”, an area that is favorable to a variety of marine species. However, we do not know what it would take to change it from this most favorable place. We need to understand carrying capacity to determine at what point habitat loss, temperature change, salinity change and change in species and abundance are significant. And we need to know the factors that could cause the changes in the parameters that would reduce productivity, diversity and ecosystem health. We have already seen a significant change in the Bay with the loss of the herring weir fishery. What has changed and what can be used as indicators of this ‘collapse’? Are we measuring the correct things?
If we are attempting to predict change, what is the signal of importance — how do you convert it into something meaningful to the community. How big an anomaly do you want to detect in order to use it for mitigation policies or early warning systems? There is a role for community to affirm the usefulness of predictive models and monitoring to feed the models and research.
With present monitoring schedules of once a month or even once a week, if there is an event that is significant, the structure of the event will not show up in the time series. We need to identify the signals that can help us — the signals that are significant to society and can affect behavior and policy.
The 60’s were cold because of the mechanism (flow from the Arctic) similar perhaps to what we could see in the future. The 70’s to 90’s was driven by surface temperature phenomena from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The period of the 1960’s when the flow and temperatures were controlled by Arctic melt could be the basis of our understanding of the impact of increased Arctic melt on the Bay of Fundy ecosystem. The signals during that time could be teased out to give us a basis of understanding. It is the small anomalies that might be helpful in predictive analysis. Is there a way to link those monitoring stations that go from St. Andrews to Frobisher Bay? We have stations with long time series for temp and salinity readings. Adding some work on currents and gyres which might create some different regimes, could be part of a predictive model.
A predictive model has to look at meteorological data and oceanographic information; it requires real time data, super computers and staff. How much would it take to do this monitoring on a timescale (15 minutes temp/salinity) that gives us better chances of predicting so that at least we can warn a population? And what would it save society?
Lack of integration of disciplines is one of the factors that has prevented us from being further ahead in predictive climate/ecosystem change modeling.
BoFEP will be using the discussion on predictive modeling and other recommendations as it develops research projects in the future that will help us understand the Bay of Fundy ecosystem and its state of health.
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