Helen Gurney-Smith

Fisheries and Oceans Canada | DFO · Ecosystems and Oceans Science

Introduction Bivalve aquaculture has direct and indirect effects on plankton communities, which are highly sensitive to short-term (seasonal, interannual) and long-term climate changes, although how these dynamics alter aquaculture ecosystem interactions is poorly understood. Methods We investigate seasonal patterns in plankton abundance and commu...

Transmissible cancers are clonal lineages of neoplastic cells able to infect multiple hosts, spreading through the environment as an infectious disease. Transmissible cancers have been identified in Tasmanian devils, dogs, and bivalves. Several lineages of bivalve transmissible neoplasias (BTN) have been identified in multiple bivalve species. In 2...

Climate change affects food production systems, forcing them to adapt. For marine fisheries, adaptation has been incremental and insufficient, and transformative adaptation stands as the opportunity for a timely transition to a more climate-resilient condition. Based on a limited transformational background that comes from the particularities of ma...

This paper discusses severe risks to food security and nutrition that are linked to ongoing and projected climate change, particularly climate and weather extremes in global warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation. We specifically consider the impacts on populations vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition due to lower income, lower acc...

Clam gardens traditionally established and maintained by coastal Indigenous Peoples of northwest North America are habitat modifications that enhance intertidal clam productivity and therefore provide secure and reliable local food resources. In this study, transcriptomic and phenotypic responses of Pacific littleneck clams ( Leukoma staminea ) wer...

The Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific literature relevant to climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report recognizes the interactions of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societie...

Anthropogenic particles (APs) generated from both natural and synthetic materials are widespread in the aquatic environment and contaminate seafood products, including shellfish. Depuration, involving the placement of filter-feeding shellfish in clean water for a period of time, often several days, is used to reduce contaminant concentrations, but...

Radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean following the Fukushima nuclear accident has raised public concern about seafood safety, particularly in coastal Indigenous communities. To address this, Health Canada and partners have collected and analyzed a total of 621 samples of commonly consumed salmon, ground fish, and shellfish from the Canadi...

Environmental impacts on fisheries are pervasive, yet methods to account for them in stock assessments and management decisions vary in rigour and quality. The prevalence and efficacy of methods to account for environmental impacts are not well documented, limiting our ability to adequately respond to future environmental and climate changes for ad...

Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FinalDraft_Chapter03.pdf

Ocean acidification (OA) affects marine organisms through various physiological and biological processes, yet our understanding of how these translate to large-scale population effects remains limited. Here, we integrated laboratory-based experimental results on the life history and physiological responses to OA of the American lobster, Homarus ame...

Bentho-pelagic life cycles are the dominant reproductive strategy in marine invertebrates, providing great dispersal ability, access to different resources, and the opportunity to settle in suitable habitats upon the trigger of environmental cues at key developmental moments. However, free-dispersing larvae can be highly sensitive to environmental...

Understanding and predicting responses of ectothermic animals to temperature are essential for decision-making and management. The thermal performance curve (TPC), which quantifies the thermal sensitivity of traits such as metabolism, growth and feeding rates in laboratory conditions, is often used to predict responses of wild populations. However,...

Climate change is already affecting the forest sector, especially through extreme events such as wildfire. These effects are expected to continue and intensify, requiring greater efforts to implement adaptation measures. While no single road map exists to guide adaptation implementation, regional risk assessments in Canada have highlighted the need...

The heavy reliance of most global aquaculture on the ambient environment suggests inherent vulnerability to climate change effects. This review explores the potential effects of climate change stressors on aquaculture biology and resources needed to support decision-making for vulnerability assessment, planned adaptation, and strategic research dev...

The heavy reliance of most global aquaculture on the ambient environment suggests inherent vulnerability to climate change effects. This review explores the potential effects of climate change stressors on aquaculture biology and resources needed to support decision-making for vulnerability assessment, planned adaptation, and strategic research dev...

Increases in global population and seafood demand are occurring simultaneously with fisheries decline in an era of rapid climate change. Aquaculture is well positioned to help meet the world's future seafood needs, but heavy reliance of most global aquaculture on the ambient environment and ecosystem services suggests inherent vulnerability to clim...

Ocean acidification (OA) describes the progressive decrease in the pH of seawater and other cascading chemical changes resulting from oceanic uptake of atmospheric carbon. These changes can have important implications for marine ecosystems, creating risk for commercial industries, subsistence communities, cultural practices, and recreation. Charact...

Shellfish aquaculture often uses large amounts of plastic equipment and has been suggested as a potential source of microplastic contamination in the marine environment. To determine the influence of shellfish aquaculture on microplastic concentrations in bivalves and their environment, we compared microplastic particle (MP) concentrations in Manil...

A method of biomonitoring marine water is provided, as are probes and kits. The method comprises: extracting messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) from Mytilus species; preparing cDNA from the mRNA; hybridizing a plurality of probes with the cDNA to provide a set of hybridized cDNA, the probes consisting of at least 20 consecutive nucleotides of at lea...

Microplastic particles (MPs) are widely distributed in seawater. Fibrous MPs (microfibres) are often reported as the most commonly encountered shape of particle. To estimate MP concentrations in seawater, samples are often collected using towed nets (generally 300-350-μm mesh) and may underestimate the amount of microfibres present, which may pass...

Marine carbon dioxide (CO2) system data has been collected from December 2014 to June 2018 in the Northern Salish Sea (NSS; British Columbia, Canada) and consisted of continuous measurements at two sites as well as spatially- and seasonally distributed discrete seawater samples. The array of CO2 observing activities included high-resolution CO2 par...

Cultivated bivalves are hugely important not only because of their economic value, but also due to their impacts on natural ecosystems. The Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) is the world's most heavily cultivated shellfish species and has been introduced to all continents except Antarctica for aquaculture. We therefore used a medium density single...

Significant declines in Pacific salmon have prompted an investigation into the survival of juvenile salmon by the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP). Timing and magnitude of salmon production is dependent on prey production, and therefore a timing shift in phytoplankton and zooplankton may influence the early mar...

The common blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) was introduced to British Columbia, Canada, in the 1980′s as an aquaculture alternative to native mussel species. Since then, the mussel industry in Pacific Canada has expanded and includes operations utilizing traditional methods of broodstock selection based on visual qualitative and quantitative traits. Th...

The protozoans Perkinsus marinus, Perkinsus olseni, Bonamia ostreae, Bonamia exitiosa, and Marteilia refringens are responsible for some of the most detrimental diseases in the production of cultivated shellfish worldwide and are classified as notifiable diseases by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). This study examined the general hea...

The impacts of oocyte parasites on the reproductive success of molluscs are largely unknown. In this study, we evaluated the presence of gonad parasites in 6 species of marine bivalve molluscs native to southern Brazil. Cultured bivalves included the mangrove oyster Crassostrea gasar (sometimes called C. brasiliana), the brown mussel Perna perna, t...

In this study, broodstock animals of the tropical scallop Nodipecten nodosus were submitted to maturation trials using two dietary sources of astaxanthin: dried microalgae Haematococcus pluvialis (Algamac AST) and live microalgae obtained from in vitro cultures. The influence of astaxanthin on broodstock maturation was assessed by analyzing stages...

The ability of the green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) to consume and subsequently reduce the organic content of sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) culture waste was assessed and properties influencing the dispersal of fecal pellets egested by the sea urchins were quantified in laboratory trials. Ingestion rate, absorption efficiency,...

The basket cockle (Clinocardium nuttallii) is a candidate species for aquaculture in the northeast Pacific. The aim of the current research was to assess the feasibility of C. nuttallii grow‐out, with an emphasis on growth performance and qualities affecting product marketability. In this article, we investigated the combined effects of culture mod...

We investigated the effects of culture mode (intertidal and off‐bottom suspended culture) and initial stocking density (5%, 10%, 35% and 70% bottom cover) on survival, growth and condition indices of three size cohorts (16, 22 and 32 mm initial shell length) of the basket cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii, during a second year of grow‐out. In addition...

The effects of stocking density, ration, and temperature on seed growth – from early post-settlement to a size suitable for out-planting (i.e. ~4mm shell length) – and the effect of stocking density on metamorphic rates were examined for the basket cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii, to determine optimal hatchery rearing conditions for this species. Th...

Abstract The basket cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii, is a candidate species for aquaculture in British Columbia, Canada. Previous research on broodstock conditioning, embryonic development and larval rearing of C. nuttallii demonstrated the potential for reliable hatchery production of cockle seed. In this paper, we investigated the effects of cultu...

This study determined optimal rearing conditions – stocking density, algal density, and temperature – for hatchery production of the basket cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii, from newly-hatched D-larvae to pediveligers using static rearing systems and discontinuous feeding. The combined effect of initial stocking density (2, 4, and 8larvaeml−1) and al...

The nutritional value of four microalgal species: Chaetocerosmuelleri, Pavlovalutheri, Tahitian strain of Isochrysis sp. (TISO), and Thalassiosirapseudonana in single- and bi-species diets was evaluated for larvae and post-larvae of the basket cockle, Clinocardiumnuttallii. Larval shell growth and metamorphic rate were found to be the greatest with...