New research chair at Huntsman Marine
The value of New Brunswick's fish and seafood exports exceeded $1 billion in 2013. Elevated water temperatures, hypoxia, ocean acidification, and industrial pollution is threatening both fisheries and the aquaculture industry. By bringing over 25 years of experience in fish health research and development, Dr. Barker, alongside other excellent researchers at Huntsman Marine Science Centre, will help aquatic industries overcome these challenges. As the newly appointed Chair in Aquatic Biosciences, Dr. Barker will also get an opportunity to apply his expertise regarding parasites and diseases in cultured and wild fish with the aim to develop advanced methods for their mitigation and control.
During his career, Dr. Barker has received numerous grants, trained over 90 students and high-quality personnel and has published numerous peer-reviewed articles. He has moved back to Eastern Canada from Vancouver Island University on the West coast of British Columbia. He spoke of his recent appointment as a “very exciting opportunity to apply research in an industrial setting”.
Founded in 1969, the Huntsman Marine Science Centre is a private, not-for-profit research and education facility that promotes and helps develops business by exploratory and R&D projects for both public and private sector partners.
This research position offers an important service for the industry in providing a “one-stop shopping” for companies to investigate challenges that they may face in the aquaculture sector from proof of principle in vaccine development, to toxicology testing, just to name a few.
For example, one project will be assessing the effects of off-shore oil spills on local commercially important species such as Atlantic cod, herring, shrimp and lobster. This 4 year/$1.5 million project funded by the Environmental Science Research Fund will provide critical information on how larval stages of these species are affected by oil spills.
Another exciting project in the pipeline is performing taxonomic assessment of all the species of parasitic copepods present on salmon farms in the New Brunswick and Newfoundland area. Currently there is no data describing population structures of these parasites. Typically we think of salmon lice as Lepeophtheirus salmonis; however, there are several other species such as Caligus elongatus that also cause significant problems for salmon farmers, but which behave differently than L. salmonis. By surveying the different lice populations present in various regions of Eastern Canada, more effective management strategies can be designed to control infections.
