A marine food web is formed of all the species in a given area and their feeding interactions, or “who eats who”. It underpins the production of several ecosystem services that support human well-being in coastal communities.
For instance, communities of the Kitikmeot Region in Nunavut, where I carried out my PhD research, derive benefits ranging from Arctic Char fisheries, seal hunting and other country foods, to cultural practices and identity.
Marine food webs and fisheries
in the context of climate change
An Arctic marine food web. Source: Ocean North 2018
Throughout the years, I’ve studied different changes affecting marine food webs, including shifts in the timing of ice breakups and, in turn, of spring blooms and in the marine fauna, and the northward expansion of boreal and temperate species into the Arctic. Most of my doctoral research was based in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut, where I studied the marine ecosystem and ecosystem services in the context of Arctic climate change.
Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut
There, I studied how climate-related changes in the marine environment over the past three decades affected the food web and Arctic char fisheries.
Arctic Char acoustic tagging
To achieve this, I sampled different marine organisms in the region, from phytoplankton (microscopic algae found in the sea), zooplankton (tiny marine animals that live in the sea, such as shrimps and krill), benthic organisms (which are all the organisms living on or in the sea floor) to fish species, in particular Arctic Char.
From left to right: Leaving Cambridge Bay for our first field camp at Ekalluk river; Our laboratory tent for fish tagging; Meyok Omilgoitok, our field guide, bringing back an Arctic Char; Sorting zooplankton organisms in the boat's lab for further analyses; Oceanographic sampling in front of Cambridge Bay; Deployment of a net to capture zooplankton; Deployment of the CTD.
In this research, we found important shifts in the marine system, including earlier ice breakup and a diet change in Arctic Char, possibly caused by shifts in prey availability over recent decades. These ecological changes have deeper social-ecological implications for communities, such as by influencing fish catchability and nutritional quality.
Graphical Abstract of our paper "Biophysical indicators and Indigenous and Local Knowledge reveal climatic and ecological shifts with implications for Arctic Char fisheries" in Global Environmental Change.
I am currently working, as part of my postdoctoral research at the Littoral Research Chair, on different projects aimed at better understanding how climatic changes are influencing marine food webs and fisheries mostly in Nunavik and Nunavut, including the Belmont Forum project Marine Arctic Resilience, Adaptations and Transformations (MARAT) and the Genome Canada project Fostering Indigenous Small-scale fisheries for Health, Economy and food Security (FISHES).