WHY Monitor the Harbour?

Project Description: Ecology of St. Ann’s Harbour

The effects of a mega mussel farm.

The Stewards of St Ann’s Harbour Association in association with Dr. Annelise Chapman - Ocean Edge - Ecological Consulting & Education. Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) is providing partial funding for the project.

The project is carried out under the guidance and direction of marine scientist Dr Lise Chapman. Dr. Chapman is an internationally recognized marine scientist. She has completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg, Germany and since then worked as a coastal ecologist at Dalhousie University, Halifax and at the Universities of Portsmouth and Plymouth, UK. She has authored and co-authored more than twenty research publications, she has been invited to present her work at 11 conferences in the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Canada. Presently, she has her own Consulting and Education Business and teaches on a part time basis at Dalhouse University. Her most recent contracts have been with the Geological Survey of Canada (Benthic Habitat Mapping of the Beaufort Sea). Dr. Chapman is familiar with our area and participated in an educational Aquaculture conference, which took place here in 2001.

Project Summary:

St. Ann’s Harbour, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia has recently been identified as a site for a new large scale (approximately 1200 acres) blue mussel aquaculture operation that will be phased in over five years. It is essential that research be conducted from now throughout the development of the operation so that changes to the ecological aspects of St. Ann’s Harbour can be detected.

This study proposes to assess the ecological effects of the mussel farm on the benthic species community, with particular attention to alien invasive species. Benthic communities (infauna and epifauna) will be sampled directly using suction airlifts manipulated by SCUBA divers. Benthic samples will be identified to species level and community analysis will be carried out using multivariate statistical techniques. Ecological links between the bivalve aquaculture and marine invasive species (e.g. the provision of additional attachment substratum for epibiota) will be studied in detail.

Community Groups, including the Stewards of St Ann’s Harbour Association, will perform a simultaneous monitoring programme of intertidal habitats and other ecological aspects of the Harbour. This represents a unique opportunity to link the scientific study of marine benthos to a monitoring program of the Harbour by the local community. It can serve as a model for other communities with similar industrial and ecological developments. One of the objectives for this part of the study is the production of an information booklet outlining the natural history, ecological highlights and specific environmental issues of St. Ann’s Harbour. In this sense the project places broader academic questions within the context of the natural heritage and ongoing environmental issues of Nova Scotia.