Flex Your Mussels

TEDx Victoria Talks | November 19, 2011

The BC coastline is under increasing pressure from competing coastal zone utilization (e.g. urbanization, recreation and aquaculture) and potential climate change impacts, highlighting the need for effective diagnostic tools of coastal ecosystem health and function. One of the major problems in assessing shellfish health is how to determine the organism’s response to multiple stressing agents in the natural environment such as temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and diet as well as to man-made effects such as pollution and aquaculture husbandry methods. Mass mortalities have occurred in both wild and cultured populations of marine shellfish, and the reasons remain largely unclear.

But what is stress to shellfish? How much can they withstand, and what are the major stressors in their environment? To look at this we’re using a type of genomics called functional genomics, through a tool called a microarray that we’ve developed. This allows you to look at the first level of a stress response, by looking at changes in the expression of genes. We hope to use this to examine how large-scale climate variations (e.g. ocean acidification, global warming) may affect the animals that we see on the beach in the future. Also to use these techniques to examine how industries and wastewater may affect coastal health and productivity. What impacts do upland users, such as increased urbanization and agriculture, have on coastal systems? And also what role do environmental fluctuations play in stress responses? We’re just beginning this research so watch this space!

To read more about stress and shellfish, here is an article from the Victoria Times Colonist where Helen Gurney-Smith talks about it. Calm down, mussels...Why scientists are trying to soothe stressed sentinels of the sea.

 

For more information see www.mytome.ca or contact:

Helen Gurney-Smith, PhD | Research Scientist

Head of Shellfish Health & Husbandry Group

Centre for Shellfish Research

Vancouver Island University

900 Fifth Street, Building 373

Nanaimo, BC V9R 5S5 Canada

Telephone: 1.250.740.6381

e-mail: helen.gurney-smith@viu.ca

Web: www.viu.ca/csr | www.mytome.ca