Ian H. McQuinn

Ian H. McQuinn
Fisheries and Oceans Canada | DFO · Maurice Lamontagne Institute (MLI)

BSc Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS

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52
Publications
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1,561
Citations

Publications

Publications (52)
Technical Report
Full-text available
Spatially-stratified acoustic surveys based on krill habitat characteristics were conducted by the F.G. Creed in the estuary and Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence from 2008 to 2017 to describe krill distribution and estimate biomass. To provide estimates of biomass after 2017, we aimed to rely on acoustic data recorded by the Teleost since 2012 during...
Article
Full-text available
Decades after a ban on hunting, and despite focused management interventions, the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary (SLE) beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) population has failed to recover. We applied a population viability analysis to simulate the responses of the SLE beluga population across a wide range of variability and uncertainty under current an...
Article
Full-text available
Vessel underwater noise (VUN) is one of the main threats to the recovery of the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary Beluga population (SLEB). The 1% yearly population decline indicates that the cumulative threats are already beyond sustainable limits for the SLEB. However, a potential threefold increase in shipping traffic is expected within its critic...
Article
Full-text available
Blue whale survival and fitness are highly contingent on successful food intake during an intense feeding season. Factors affecting time spent at the surface or at depth in a prey patch are likely to alter foraging effort, net energy gain, and fitness. We specifically examined the energetic consequences of a demonstrated reduction in dive duration...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Foreword This series documents the scientific basis for the evaluation of aquatic resources and ecosystems in Canada. As such, it addresses the issues of the day in the time frames required and the documents it contains are not intended as definitive statements on the subjects addressed but rather as progress reports on ongoing investigations.
Article
Foraging efficiency (FE) is determined by the ratio of energy intake to energy expen- diture and represents a metric for estimating the capacity to store energy. Blue whales Bal- aenoptera musculus rely mostly on stored energy reserves for reproduction. They feed almost exclusively on krill, which vary in density and abundance both spatially and te...
Article
Northeast Atlantic marine ecosystems such as the Bay of Biscay, Celtic Sea, English Channel, Subpolar Gyre region, Icelandic waters and North Sea as well as the Mediterranean Sea show concomitant ‘regime shift’-like changes around the mid-1990s, which involved all biota of the pelagial: phytoplankton, zooplankton, pelagic fish assemblages, demersal...
Article
Full-text available
The synchrony of pelagic fish population dynamics with climate variability may impose significant alterations in their distribution and biomass, as well as catch composition, with potential effects on ecosystems and fisheries. This work examines the effect of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) signals a...
Article
The recovery of whale species at risk requires the implementation of protection measures designed to mitigate the risks posed by various stressors. In the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada), several whale species are threatened by navigation activities in various ways. Since 2013, seasonal voluntary ship strike miti-gation measures, including a speed re...
Article
Full-text available
The St. Lawrence Estuary (“SLE”) population of beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) was depleted by hunting. The population failed to increase in numbers at the rate one would expect after cessation of hunting. We conducted a population viability analysis (“PVA”) to quantify factors that most likely limit recovery of SLE beluga. The main threats consider...
Article
Full-text available
The objective of this study was to describe the spatial distribution of krill in eastern Canadian waters using a statistical modelling approach in support of the identification of important habitat for the western North Atlantic (WNA) blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were constructed from krill biomass data obt...
Article
Full-text available
Depuis plusieurs années, le concept d’approche écosystémique est avancé mondialement comme une solution possible aux problématiques de gestion liées à la détérioration des écosystèmes marins et de leurs ressources découlant de l’activité humaine, incluant les pêches, le développement industriel, l’aquaculture, etc. Au Canada, le ministère des Pêche...
Article
Full-text available
A debate has developed over the ecosystem consequences following the collapse of Atlantic cod throughout the coastal waters of eastern Canada. The explosive increase in pelagic fish abundance in scientific bottom-trawl catches on the eastern Scotian Shelf has been interpreted as being due to either (i) a “pelagic outburst” of forage fish abundance...
Article
Full-text available
The Gulf of St. Lawrence (GSL) is a feeding ground for several baleen whale species from the North Atlantic, providing them with an abundant supply of krill during their seasonal presence. Krill aggregations are found along the abrupt topography formed by the deep channels, but the dynamics of krill aggregations have not yet been characterized at t...
Article
Full-text available
The opportunistic collection of hydroacoustic data during multipurpose, large-scale surveys since 2000 has led to the detection of several, newly-documented krill concentrations throughout the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Based on both historical and these recent results, a series of regional-scale acoustic surveys was initiated in the northwestern Gulf a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In Canada, interest in a potential new krill source focusses on the evaluation of biochemical composition of northern and arctic krill for nutraceutical, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Our prime objective is to examine the ecological resilience of the krill stocks in the St. Lawrence system prior to human exploitation. Krill stocks must co...
Article
Full-text available
The St. Lawrence beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) population is at the southernmost limit of the species. In spite of > 30 years protection, there is little or no indication that the population is recovering. The main objective of this study is to characterize long-term changes in the environmental conditions likely to have an impact on beluga...
Article
Full-text available
McQuinn, I. H., Dion, M., and St. Pierre, J.-F. 2013. The acoustic multifrequency classification of two sympatric euphausiid species (Meganyctiphanes norvegica and Thysanoessa raschii), with empirical and SDWBA model validation. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 636–649. The ecosystem approach to fishery management requires monitoring capabilit...
Article
Full-text available
Plourde, S., McQuinn, I. H., Maps, F., St-Pierre, J-F., Lavoie, D., and Joly, P. 2014. Daytime depth and thermal habitat of two sympatric krill species in response to surface salinity variability in the Gulf of St Lawrence, eastern Canada. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71: 272–281. We describe the response of acoustically determined weighted me...
Article
Full-text available
Maps, F., Plourde, S., Lavoie, D., McQuinn, I., and Chassé, J. 2014. Modelling the influence of daytime distribution on the transport of two sympatric krill species (Thysanoessa raschii and Meganyctiphanes norvegica) in the Gulf of St Lawrence, eastern Canada. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71: 282–292. The Gulf of St Lawrence (GSL) provides sev...
Patent
Full-text available
The St. Lawrence beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) population is at the southernmost limit of the species. In spite of > 30 years protection, there is little or no indication that the population is recovering. The main objective of this study is to characterize long-term changes in the environmental conditions likely to have an impact on beluga...
Article
Full-text available
The threatened resident beluga population of the St. Lawrence Estuary shares the Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park with significant anthropogenic noise sources, including marine commercial traffic and a well-established, vessel-based whale-watching industry. Frequency-dependent (FD) weighting was used to approximate beluga hearing sensitivity to de...
Article
Full-text available
Petitgas, P., Secor, D. H., McQuinn, I., Huse, G., and Lo, N. 2010. Stock collapses and their recovery: mechanisms that establish and maintain life-cycle closure in space and time. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 67: 1841–1848. Experience has established that the recovery of many collapsed stocks takes much longer than predicted by traditional fi...
Article
Full-text available
The use of bottom-trawl research survey data to estimate population trends for small pelagic fishes, despite the extremely low selectivity of this gear for these species, has created the impression of a pelagic fish outburst along eastern Canada in the 1990s as a top-down response resulting from the demise of the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and oth...
Article
Full-text available
RÉSUMÉ Ce document de recherche présente les zones d’importance (ZI) écologique et biologique candidates identifiées pour le zooplancton (biomasse, indice de production secondaire) dans le golfe du Saint-Laurent (GSL). Les régions présentant une forte biomasse pour trois classes de tailles ou groupes de zooplancton (méso-zooplancton <1 mm et >1 mm,...
Article
Full-text available
Accurate identification of stock boundaries is essential for efficient fisheries management; hence, the present study focused on the genetic structure of whiting. To this aim, 488 individuals collected from the southern Bay of Biscay to the southern Norwegian coast were genotyped using 7 microsatellites. A low level of genetic structuring was detec...
Article
Full-text available
Atlantic sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus and lake sturgeon A. fulvescens in the middle St. Lawrence estuary are under consideration for designation as "endan-gered" or "vulnerable" species. A potential threat to these species is the disposal of dredged sediments in an area where young-of-the-year and juvenile Atlantic sturgeon concentrate. The object...
Article
Full-text available
The objectives of this study were to design an operationally efficient groundfish survey integrating both acoustic and trawl methodologies, to measure the changing vertical availability of cod to each method over 24 h and to compare cod-biomass estimates from the two methods within two experimental sub-regions. The two-phased sampling design involv...
Article
Full-text available
To outline the elements of the physical environment that will effect seismic sound propagation, we subdivided Canadian waters into five hydrophysical areas based on a number of broadly-defined physical features such as depth, bottom type, weather patterns, and surrounding land masses: Enclosed Continental Shelf, Narrow and Broad Continental Shelves...
Article
Full-text available
Vertical orientation (tilt angle) is known to affect the target strength (TS) of ensonified fish and is a large component of the variability inherent in acoustic-biomass estimates. To measure the effects of changes in tilt angle on TS during diel vertical migrations, a concentration of migrating Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) was observed acoustically...
Article
Capelin (Mallotus villosus) is an important forage fish in northern latitudes. The effect of the individual biological variability on the target strength (TS) at various acoustic frequencies was investigated from a sample collected in the St. Lawrence estuary. The geometric properties of the fish and its swimbladder were measured from radiographs o...
Article
Full-text available
Two opposing concepts of Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus L., population structure are critically reviewed with the objective of unifying these divergent views under the metapopulation concept. It is concluded that neither the discrete population concept nor the dynamic balance concept adequately explains all the data associated with herring popul...
Article
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This study compared the hatching season and the actual spawning season of spring- and au­ tumn-spawning herring in the north­ ern GulfofSt. Lawrence as determined by otolith characteristics and maturity stages. respectively, to measure the crossover between the two spawning populations. The growth characteristics of two cohorts that showed signific...
Article
Full-text available
A model is developed to identify the spawning type of individual herring (Clupea harengus harengus) from the sympatric spring and autumn spawning stocks in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence (NAFO Division 4T). The maturity stage is assigned from a gonadosomatic index model using discriminant analysis and the spawning type is determined from the mat...
Article
Full-text available
A study was conducted to examine the size and shape of the area of attraction, to evaluate the effective fishing area of a whelk (Buccinum undatum) trap under different physical and biotic conditions, and to validate the whelk density estimates as determined from the effective area. The study was conducted using a tag–recapture method in the Archip...
Article
Full-text available
Early development patterns of Isle Verte (St Lawrence Estuary) herring corresponded closest to those of other cold water populations in the North Atlantic. A field experiment showed a negligible effect of individually fluctuating physico-chemical parameters on percent egg survival in tidal pools. However, low oxygen concentrations combined with sil...

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