Our scientists – From coast to coast to coast – Chris Pearce
Learn more about climate change and ocean acidification.
Transcript
My name is Chris Pearce, I'm a Research Scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
I work on shellfish aquaculture. I work with different species of shellfish including different species of fresh water and marine animals.
We do work out in the fields, usually in conjunction with industry where we set up our experiments at industry tenures, we also do work in the laboratory.
Climate change and ocean acidification are big drivers in the research that I do.
Especially ocean acidification, this is where the pH is lowering in the sea water and is affecting shell forming organisms - things like oysters, clams, sea urchins - and it's been a big problem in the pacific north west especially in shellfish hatcheries, the pH has been so low that the shell forming organisms haven't been able to form their shells properly and they end up dying, so it's reduced production in the hatcheries.
We're in the midst of developing a new system that's going to allow us to control pH and temperature and manipulate those two variables together and the thought process is that we can produce sea water of different pH and different temperature and test the effects on different species of interest and this is going to give us valuable information to predict what future ocean acidification impacts might be.
Why is my work important to Canadians? Well, aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector on the planet. Canada stands to be a world leading country in development and production of aquaculture but we need the science to back it up to prove that aquaculture can be environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable.
- Date modified: