Mike Sweezey did his MSc. proposal presentation on March 31. His project is on “The Importance of Freshwater Overwintering Habitat to the Life Cycle of the American Eel.” Mike has been doing field work with his summer student, Robert Ginson, for two weeks now, fishing eel using the smolt wheel and fyke nets on the Upper Salmon River, Alma, NB. They have PIT tagged almost 200 eel and radio tagged 3 eel.
Robert Ginson releasing an eel upstream
Simon Courtenay spoke on CAMP (Community Aquatic Monitoring Program) at Andre St-Hilaire's NSERC workshop April 23-24.
Jared Tomie did his MSc. proposal presentation on April 27. His project is on “Substrate preference and burrowing behaviour of the American eel (Anguilla rostrata).” He is now setting up tanks to get started with eel experiments at the Mactaquac Biodiversity Centre.
Allan Debertin did his MSc. proposal presentation on May 11. His project is on “Predator-prey interactions between planktivorous fish and their prey in the Northumberland Strait.” He is now in the lab sorting through the stomach contents of Northumberland Strait fish.
Sarah Dickison completed her first bioassay looking at the toxicity of dispersed oil for Atlantic herring embryos.
Simon Courtenay, Marie-Helene Theriault, Allison Schein, Jared Tomie, and Allan Debertin attended the Atlantic Canada Coastal and Estuarine Science Society (ACCESS) conference at UPEI in Charlottetown from May 13 – 15. They heard some interesting talks and enjoyed a delicious banquet dinner on the 13th. Allison, Jared, Allan, and Marie-Helene all gave a talk about their projects, and Allison and Jared won first and second place, respectively, for Best Student Oral Presentation. Congratulations Allison and Jared!
Allan won the 2009 Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence Coalition on Sustainability Scholarship, valued at $5000. The Coalition offers this scholarship to encourage students to pursue research on environmental and sustainability topics in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence region. Allan will give a talk about his work to the coalition on June 11th, at their annual general meeting in Emerald, PEI. Congratulations, Allan!
