Brent Law

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Verified

Brent verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Research Scientist at Bedford Institute of Oceanography

Sediment cores from the western Gulf of Lions France were subject to known bottom shear stresses with the goal of understanding size-specific sediment erodibility. On cruises in October 2004, February and April 2005, cores with an undisturbed sediment–water interface were collected along a transect extending seaward from the Tet river mouth. The co...

ABSTRACT: Scientific understanding of aquaculture interactions with the environment is limited, especially concerning the far-field transport and possible impacts of particulate wastes. A pilot study was carried out in southwest New Brunswick, Canada, in November 2008 to determine the size, settling velocity, and density of suspended particles at a...

A laboratory study was carried out to examine the effect of bed sediment texture on the erodibility of salmon aquaculture waste fecal material and salmon feed pellets. Erodibility measurements of this material were made using a Gust microcosm erosion chamber and artificially composed substrates of mud, sand, sand and gravel, sand and cobble, and co...

In the hyper-tidal Minas Basin located in the upper Bay of Fundy, Canada, the concentration of total suspended matter increases by an order of magnitude in winter as material from the expansive tidal flats is remobilized and storms increase cliff erosion. Tripods with a digital floc camera, LISST 100B, optical backscatter sensors, settling velocity...

The Scotian Shelf is one of the top wind regimes in the world. In order to assess the wind energy of the potential wind farms over the shelf, in this study, we first assessed the uncertainties of four commonly used wind datasets: ERA5, CFSv2, NARR, and HRDPS, by comparing them against observational wind data distributed at both nearshore and offsho...

This overview of Napu’saqnuk / St. Mary’s River estuary summarizes what is known about its key physical and biological components. Napu’saqnuk is an Ecologically Significant Area (ESA) candidate under Canada’s Fisheries Act. The estuary exhibits a strong estuarine gradient in salinity, water temperature, and bottom sediments. This gradient supports...

This study explores a combined strategy of Raman and reflectance spectroscopy for quantifying liver fat content and fat droplet size, crucial in assessing donor livers. By using Monte Carlo simulations and experimental setups with oil‐in‐water phantoms, our findings indicate that Raman scattering can solely differentiate between varying fat content...

The disaggregated inorganic grain size (DIGS) of bottom sediment analyzed with a Coulter Counter (CC) has been used to show that the fraction of sediment deposited in flocs (floc fraction) increased in both the near and far field after the introduction of open cage salmon aquaculture, altering benthic habitat and species composition. As a result, D...

This study explores a combined strategy of Raman and reflectance spectroscopy for quantifying liver fat content and fat droplet size, crucial in assessing donor livers. By using Monte Carlo simulations and experimental setups with oil-in-water phantoms, our findings indicate that Raman scattering can solely differentiate between varying fat content...

The presence of in-feed anti-sea lice drugs and their relationship with organic enrichment is poorly understood in sediment surrounding salmon farms. Using data from an aquaculture monitoring program (2018-2020), we describe this relationship at ten sites in four Canadian provinces. Three anti-sea lice pesticides (lufenuron, teflubenzuron, emamecti...

Benthic organic enrichment at 2 high-flow Atlantic salmon Salmo salar farms and at a low-flow mussel Mytilus edulis farm was studied to assess the capacity of local physical and biological processes to assimilate organic waste inputs. Geochemical metrics served as proxies for detecting potential biological effects. High-flow sites are generally pre...

Models of particulate waste production and deposition can be used in performance-based management approaches as cost-effective tools to assess environmental effects of open-pen finfish aquaculture. XLDEPMOD is an MS Excel® spreadsheet-based depositional model for predicting particulate organic carbon (POC) waste production and sedimentation from ne...

Aquaculture farm cages have the ability to interact with local circulation due to the drag caused by the cages. We examined how the drag influences the residence time of particles within fish farms in the southwest Isles region of New Brunswick, Canada, in the Bay of Fundy using a high-resolution hydrodynamic model. To accomplish this, we parameter...

Large waves and storm surge generated by powerful storms can have detrimental impacts on coastal areas. The Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy system in the Atlantic Ocean is a particularly dynamic environment where storm surge can synergistically combine with the large tides to yield serious impacts on low-lying coastal areas. In this study, impacts f...

A field study is presented that provides an alternative method and system for classifying the ecological quality status (EQS) of organically enriched marine sediments based on total free sulfide concentrations (S 2−). Sediments collected adjacent to coastal aquaculture activities across a broad biogeographic range were analysed using three S 2− met...

The influence of substrate type and particle age on the remobilization of settled Atlantic salmon Salmo salar faecal material was studied through a set of controlled experiments in horizontal flow flumes, simulating different bottom conditions present in fish-farming locations along the coast of Norway. There was no significant effect of pellet age...

Wave tank experiments with dilbit and 50 ppm sediment concentration (2015).

Cores collected with an intact sediment-water interface were coupled to a Gust erosion chamber to measure cumulative mass eroded at increasing shear stress steps in areas of salmon aquaculture. Cores were collected along transects of stations at a cohesive and a non-cohesive seabed site. Organic matter percentage in bottom sediments near aquacultur...

Atlantic Sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) use inner Bay of Fundy tidal flats and channels to feed on buried infauna, leaving feeding excavations in bottom sediments. As commercial development of tidal power resources continues, future outlook suggests that up to several hundred turbines may be proposed to occupy the area. The potential for interacti...

Understanding the processes that lead to seasonal changes in grain size on muddy macro-tidal flat and channel complexes will assist efforts to predict future changes caused by climate change and construction of infrastructure like tidal power generators, wind farms, and causeways. Surficial sediment samples were collected for disaggregated inorgani...

The export of Canadian petroleum products to international markets introduces the substantial risk of oil spills in near-shore and coastal environments. This requires a marine science perspective in response techniques and protocols, including the development of predictive models to anticipate the fate of oil spilled in the aquatic environment. The...

Raindrops falling on the sea surface produce turbulence. The present study examined the influence of rain-induced turbulence on oil droplet size and dispersion of oil spills in Douglas Channel in British Columbia, Canada using hourly atmospheric data in 2011–2013. We examined three types of oils: a light oil (Cold Lake Diluent - CLD), and two heavy...

In most aquatic environments, suspended sediment is composed of loosely packed particle aggregates, termed flocs that have variable apparent densities. The apparent density of flocs, which is defined as particle dry mass over wet volume, is an important variable because it affects settling velocity and vertical sediment flux. Two established method...

Oil-particle aggregates (OPAs), formed by interactions between dispersed oil droplets and fine suspended sediments are able to transport spilled oil from the sea surface either by suspension in the water column or as dense aggregates that sink to the sea bottom. In the present paper, a first order approximation of the sinking ratio (oil sinking as...

The export of Canadian diluted bitumen to international markets via the Pacific Ocean requires an ocean-based segment in the proposed transport route. This introduces the risk of oil being released into the marine environment, and necessitates an oceanographic perspective on potential spills. Parameters such as the size, settling velocity and bulk...

In April 2014, the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Species at Risk Management Division (SARMD) in the Maritimes Region requested information from DFO Science to assist with the delineation of boundaries for critical habitat (CH) being considered for Inner Bay of Fundy (IBOF) Atlantic Salmon within Chignecto Bay and Minas Basin, specifically: to a...

Past investigations at historical gold (Au) districts in Nova Scotia, Canada have identified elevated concentrations of arsenic (As) and mercury (Hg) in nearby sediments and waters. These metal(loid)s are derived from erosion of mineralized bedrock, and the disposal of mine tailings into the environment during early operations. The Wine Harbour gol...

The Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada has the world's largest tidal range of over 16 m with tidal currents up to 5 ms −1 making it an ideal place for tidal power extraction using tidal in-stream energy conversion devices in the Minas Passage. Field observations collected from ship-based and bottom-moored sensors over an 8-day period in 2013 are used t...

Impacts of fish cages on the local current field and the erosion of the bottom sediment have been investigated with a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The model is evaluated against independent observational current data. Model results show that the presence of fish cages restricts water flow and damps the velocity in the surface layer occupie...

Many contaminants in aquatic environments are associated with loosely packed aggregates of particulate material called flocs. Flocculation allows contaminants to accumulate at the sediment-water interface and it packages them in a form that is readily available for ingestion by filter feeding organisms. Unfortunately, most samplers being used for e...

The goal of this research was to investigate size-specific retention of clay and silt-sized grains by biofilms in sandy intertidal sediments. Sediment cores were collected from an intertidal flat in Cole Harbour, NS, and eroded at increasing shear stresses (0.08–0.60 Pa) with a Gust micro-cosm. Half of the cores were eroded without undergoing prior...

Produced water is one of the largest waste products routinely discharged into the ocean from offshore oil and gas platforms. This study analyzed bacterial communities and metals in the produced water, surrounding seawater, and sediment around the Thebaud platform. The bacterial community within the produced water was different from the seawater (SA...

Water column samples for trace metal and nutrient analysis were collected in the vicinity of the Hibernia offshore oil and gas platform on CCGS Hudson cruises in July 2005 and June 2006 as part of an investigation of chemical tracers of produced water discharges. Measurements of metals and nutrients in two produced water samples from the Hibernia p...

The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that the aggregated state of natural marine particles constrains the sensitivity of optical beam attenuation to particle size. An instrumented bottom tripod was deployed at the 12-m node of the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory to monitor particle size distributions, particle size-versus-settlin...

The goal of our Tidal Flats research is to expand our understanding of the erosional and depositional processes that lead to exchange of mud between tidal channels and tidal flats and its impact on sediment strength.

The goal of this research is to develop greater understanding of the how the flocculation of finegrained sediment responds to turbulent stresses and how this packaging of sediment affects optical and acoustical properties in the water column. Achieving these goals will improve the skill of sediment transport models and their validation and hence vi...

Over the past several decades, a significant amount of knowledge from scientific studies has been gathered by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), in addition to other national and international efforts, on the marine ecosystem and marine resources of Georges Bank. This research document is a compilation of DFO's most up-to-date ‘state of knowledge’...

Field measurements of sediment size, porosity and erodibility were collected 3 times over the course of a year within a flat-channel complex in Willapa Bay to examine seasonal and spatial variations in sediment properties and transport potential. Grain size measurements of the sediment surface and eroded sediment and measurements of sediment streng...

Effects of mussel Mytilus edulis aquaculture on benthic organic enrichment were determined in Tracadie Bay, a shallow, nutrient-rich embayment in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Water content (WC), inorganic grain size (GS), organic matter (OM), redox potentials (EhNHE) and free sulfides (S) in the upper 2 cm of sediment were measured at 58 stations...

The sand-mud transition (SMT) is a common boundary on continental shelves where the mean diameter of seabed sediments drops abruptly from ~ 100 mum to ~ 10 mum. This transition is important because sands and muds host different benthic communities, have different acoustic properties, and carry different loads of heavy metals and biogenic particles....

Particle size distribution and size-specific settling velocity are critical parameters for understanding the transport of fine sediment on continental margins. In this study, observed floc size versus settling velocity, volume distributions of particles 2 mm–1 cm in diameter, and calculated effective densities for all particle sizes provided estima...

In October 2000, a 100-year flood event in the Po River resulted in the formation of a fine-grained sediment deposit extending up to 10 km from the river mouth. Soon after this event, and for a subsequent period of 2 years, box cores were collected on a grid of stations off of the Po Delta to observe the evolution of the flood deposit. Using a proc...

An experiment investigating the influence of high-concentration suspensions of fine sediments (fluid muds) on a quasi-steady flow was carried out in the Petitcodiac River, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada in August 2006. Concurrent measurements of fluid properties (salinity, temperature, density), suspended-sediment concentration, current velocity an...

To date most of the research on the resuspension of cohesive sediments has focused on erosion rate and cumulative mass eroded under varying stress conditions. Much less attention has been paid to size sorting during and after resuspension events. Three separate cruises in the Gulf of Lions France, during October 2004 and February and April 2005 wer...