Grant: Alliance Grants

Fish stock delineation and management are challenging and complex tasks, where many variables have to be simultaneously considered to provide an equitable, sustainable and efficiency stock attribution. This challenge is multiplied when the managed stock is a shared multi-jurisdictional resource, targeted by commercial, recreational and subsistence fisheries. In the Lake St. Francis (LSF), producing an integrated and objective status of the Yellow Perch population is one of these challenges, as multiple agencies with legitimate power to act on its conservation and management have established their own independent assessment, which is producing a contradictory portrait. A global investigation is then needed, as erroneous conclusions on LSF Yellow Perch status may put at risk the managers to promote over-exploitation of the stock. Although delineation of stock structure is not a new objective of fisheries science, the proposed research framework, which combines two innovative methods, namely genomics and otolith microchemistry, is a novel strategy that seldom remain implemented in real-world scenarios. The ultimate goal of the research project is to provide empirical evaluation of the Yellow Perch fish stock structure to ensure a responsible and sustainable exploitation of one of the healthiest perch population of the St. Lawrence River system. As the Yellow Perch is one of many shared fisheries resources in the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes Basin, our framework and results could springboard other similar research projects and emergence of cohesive research teams in Canada fisheries management.