Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The need to manage and conserve marine living resources more effectively in Canada is underscored by the collapse of many commercial fisheries and the increasing number of species listed as threatened or endangered. Managers have been hindered by a lack of knowledge on whether populations of a given species should be treated as a single unit or whether some subpopulations of that species may be more important because they produce more successful offspring or seed adjacent populations. Recent advances in the study of the genetic similarity of populations and the microchemistry of fish otoliths (bone structures in the ear) offer two new tools that have the potential to identify the past history of individual fish, and the sorts of environments in which they lived as larvae, juvenile and adults. By pairing these novel techniques with physical oceanographic circulation modeling and measurements of larval and juvenile fish movements, we will determine how populations of different species of fishes with contrasting reproductive strategies are structured, which habitats are of greatest importance to different life stages, which subpopulations are interlinked, and the mechanism by which they are linked. This information will greatly enhance our capacity to conserve threatened species and manage commercial species sustainably.