Miss Neha Acharya-Patel1, Dr Caren Helbing1, Dr. Sarah Dudas2, Dr. Alejandro Frid3, Dr. Emily Rubidge2
1University Of Victoria, Victoria, Canada, 2Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Nanaimo, Canada, 3Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, Campbell River, Canada
The rocky reefs of British Columbia’s (BC) Pacific Northwest coast are a productive and diverse ecosystem that are home to many culturally and economically important rockfish species. As, BC has an extensive network of Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) to protect this group of species that are vulnerable to overfishing and other anthropogenic stressors. RCAs require monitoring to assess efficacy which poses a challenge given their number and distribution across the BC coastline. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is extra-organismal DNA that can be isolated from environmental samples such as a scoop of water. It is often a more sensitive and less resource intensive biomonitoring tool than conventional methods. Our current work pairs eDNA sample collections with ongoing SCUBA diving surveys to compare of the ability of these methods to capture overall rockfish biodiversity and abundance. Abundance estimation through eDNA is challenging but has the unprecedented potential to increase the resolution of rockfish data. We are developing sensitive species-specific eDNA assays that can detect at-risk rockfish species and using a rockfish-specific metabarcoding approach to determine biodiversity estimates. Moreover, we will assess rockfish abundance by creating a sensitive genus-specific eDNA assay. By combining eDNA sampling with existing SCUBA surveys that take detailed abundance, diversity, and size distribution data, we are creating a model to establish a relationship between eDNA signal and the amount of rockfish present. This will set the foundation for an easy and reliable method to assess the success of RCAs over time in relation to rockfish abundance.
Presentation Slides – Neha Acharya-Patel
Biography:
Neha is marine conservationist, scientist and professional diver. Her background is in applied marine ecology and she has spent years working as a field scientist and research diver in BCs coastal ecosystems.
Currently she is a pHd student at the University of where she is developing molecular tools to assess the health of marine ecosystems using environmental DNA. She is also one of the co-leads of the Canadian ECOP programme, a UN Ocean Decade initiative aimed at bringing early career ocean professionals to the higher level conversations occurring to ensure the sustainability of Canadas blue economy.
