BoFEP is thrilled to announce a new project that will combine decades of ecological data and traditional knowledge in the St. Croix region. The project will focus on changes in the plankton populations in response to climate change, and the impact these ecological shifts have on coastal communities. This study will build on recent research that suggests that plankton communities, which play a fundamental role in marine food webs and carbon storage, have been significantly changed by warming water and shifting climate.
Phytoplankton might be too small to see with the naked eye, but they are the foundations of the ocean food chain, ultimately capturing the energy that sustains the seas’ great beasts such as whales … A new study though has raised the alarm about fundamental changes to life underwater. It warns that populations of these microscopic organisms have plummeted in the last century, and the rate of loss has increased in recent years. [The Guardian]
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) began monitoring in the Bay of Fundy in the 1930s with monthly recordings of sea surface temperature, salinity, tidal state, water colour, and plankton abundance and diversity. Since 2011, additional measures have been recorded, including dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll concentrations.
There is a wealth of information within the St. Croix dataset, however it remains largely unstudied and unavailable to the public and decision makers. This represents a truly unique opportunity: time-series studies of this magnitude are rare, yet they are crucial to the identification of long-term ecological trends and development of adaptive management strategies.
This project will use decades of unanalyzed plankton samples collected by DFO to identify changes in diversity, concentration, distribution, and phenology over time, and in comparison to accelerating climate change, hydrographic shifts and chemical variables. Plankton samples represent a detailed snapshot of ecosystem function, allowing an objective look back in time and a tool for projecting into the future.
Throughout the study, information will be shared and collected through talking circles where First Nations knowledge, local community knowledge and science can converge. Developing a dialogue within Passamaquoddy First Nation and Fundy coastal communities will enhance scientific data and provide social, traditional and historical context to this study.
Results from the project will be assembled into an accessible, digital archive in 2015 that will be useful for both community members and environmental managers. Stay tuned for more updates!
Learn more:
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Climate change will upset vital ocean chemical cycles
“New research from the University of East Anglia shows that rising ocean temperatures will upset natural cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorous.
“Ocean life is being wiped out from the bottom up. The global population of microscopic plants that float in ocean water and support most marine life has declined by 1 per cent every year since 1899.
That’s the conclusion of a new study of the microorganisms, published in Nature. The annual falls translate to a 40 per cent drop in phytoplankton since 1950.
Boris Worm and his colleagues at Dalhousie University in Canada also noted that the declines had accelerated since 1950. They were correlated with rising sea surface temperatures, suggesting that climate change may be at least partly to blame.” [3]
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A North Atlantic Mystery: Case of the missing whales
“Every summer and fall, endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate in the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to gorge on zooplankton. Researchers have documented the annual feast since 1980, and well over 100 whales typically attend, a significant portion of the entire species. Only this year, they didn’t. Just a dozen right whales trickled in — a record low in the New England Aquarium’s 34-year-old monitoring program. And that comes on the heels of two other low-turnout years, 2010 and 2012.
While Brown and other right whale researchers are not ready to attribute changes in the species’ feeding or migratory patterns to any one factor, including global warming, what is clear to them is that the right whales’ new itinerary must signal a shifting food supply. A zooplankton species called Calanus finmarchicus is the whales’ mainstay. Researchers reported an unusual scarcity of the zooplankton in the Bay of Fundy this summer.” [4]
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