Sustainability Research Champion: Nicole Daigle
Author: UNB Sustainability
Posted on Mar 3, 2023
Category: Sustainability Research Champions
Universities play a crucial role in achieving a sustainable future, especially through their research. In light of this, we are excited to highlight individuals and groups at UNB that have dedicated their time to pursuing sustainability-related research. Know someone who should be a Sustainability Research Champion? Let us know at sustain@unb.ca.
Our first-ever Sustainability Research Champion is Nicole Daigle, a Ph.D. student from UNB Fredericton’s Faculty of Science, Department of Biology.
Investigating the effects of conservation stocking programs on sturgeon populations across North America
Overview of your research
My research focuses on protecting sturgeon, which according to the World Wildlife Fund are currently the most endangered species group. It is theorized that their declines are primarily due to human-related activities such as commercial harvest, habitat alteration, and climate change. I am focusing on the implications of contemporary habitat conditions and fisheries management actions on two species of sturgeon. Firstly, I am investigating whether conservation stocking has contributed to recent declines in growth rates, using bioenergetics models, for a managed sturgeon species: the pallid sturgeon (Missouri River, USA). Secondly, I am using the same modelling techniques as well as new methods (genetic analyses, stable isotope analyses, and microchemistry) to study a cryptic population of Atlantic sturgeon (Restigouche River, NB) in partnership with the Gespe'gewaq Mi'gmaq Resource Council. The goal of these studies is to provide recommendations to improve (or implement) conservation management practices.
How does your work intersect with sustainability?
The goal of my research is to make recommendations which promote healthy and sustainable sturgeon populations. For example, because of human-related activities (such as the construction of six mainstem dams in the Missouri River), the natural reproduction and recruitment rates of pallid sturgeon are abysmal. This means that the population is currently sustained by stocking programs, where hatchery-reared sturgeon are stocked into their native habitat. This program has achieved numerous scientific successes; however, declines in the growth rates of recently stocked cohorts have both scientists and managers wondering what the cause and implications of these declines are. My research, through building bioenergetics models (which quantitatively describe how energy is spent within the organism) will help to uncover the mechanism(s) behind the declines observed today, and why the declines manifest differently based on the region in the river. These models can not only help to explain the past but predict what the future may hold under various management scenarios.
We also considered sustainability in the sampling methods. For the Atlantic sturgeon study the sampling is opportunistic, meaning that samples are only taken from sturgeon that were captured as bycatch from the salmon fishery. The sturgeons are nonlethally sampled, then released back into the river.”
What impact do you hope this research will have?
“It is my hope that my research will help to conserve pallid and Atlantic sturgeon populations, while also providing the framework for validation/use of nonlethal techniques across other sturgeon species. One example of this is a study I am in the midst of publishing (my first data chapter), which validates the use of a fast, nonlethal, and sensitive tool to estimate whole-body energy in adult pallid sturgeon (since current methodologies are either crude or lethal in nature). This study will provide the framework for validation follow-up studies across all sturgeon species.”