Area of Research: DNA Barcoding

We post the concept paper for the Great Global Fish Count and the 5 slides Jesse Ausubel and Mark Stoeckle prepared for the Ocean Studies Board virtual meeting to discuss “ocean shots” for the new Ocean Decade.

Marking the 10^th anniversary of the completion of the first Census of Marine Life, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership organized a virtual symposium 26 January 2021: Observing Life in a Changing Ocean Exploring a Census of Marine Life Today.  Jesse Ausubel gave the opening talk, a 25-minute retrospective on the CoML.  We post a pdf of the slides here.

We highly recommend re-visiting the concluding report of the CoML, Highlights of a Decade of Discovery, and much other material still available at www.coml.org

At the end of August 2020, Jesse Ausubel sampled 7 locations in parts of what will become the new Squibnocket Pond Reservation (Red Gate Farm) in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard for the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation (SMF), which will manage the property together with the MV Land Bank. The late fall 2020 SMF newsletter runs a good article by Kate Feiffer about the findings, analyzed by Mark Stoeckle, which include a lot of eel and muskrat DNA and a little bit of black-crowned night heron.

Plenty of fish in the sea? Scientists can now count them using DNA

ABC News “One liter of ocean water can not only unlock the recent presence of dozens of species — it can also reveal the relative number of these fish.”  https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/plenty-fish-sea-scientists-now-count-dna/story?id=74543799 and in French, here, and in German, here

Science Magazine, United States Fisheries in a flask? Loose DNA in seawater offers a new measure of marine populations

Agencia EFE, Spain  El análisis del ADN ambiental permite saber el número de peces de los océanos https://www.infobae.com/america/agencias/2020/12/03/el-analisis-del-adn-ambiental-permite-saber-el-numero-de-peces-de-los-oceanos/

Tencent, Mainland China “New discovery by American scientists: by measuring the DNA in the sea water, you can know how many fish there are in the sea”

COSMOS Magazine, Australia Scientists go fishing for fish DNA-fish-dna/

Anthropocene How many fish are in the sea?

From the Chinese Academy of Sciences / China Science News: New method for marine biological population prediction

Greenreport, Italy Quanti pesci ci sono in mare? Ce lo dice l’eDNA

Seafood Source Cheaper, easier eDNA testing shows similar results to bottom-trawl surveys

Neue Zuricher Zeitung Find what escapes the eye: A new research approach is revolutionizing large parts of biology. Traces of genetic material in the environment provide information about hidden living organisms together with composition of entire species communities, Kurt De Swaaf

The recorded plenary talks from POGO’s International Virtual Conference on the use of Environmental DNA (eDNA) in Marine Environments: Opportunities and Challenges can be found here.

A direct link to Mark’s 19-minute talk “Trawl and eDNA assessment of marine fish in coastal New Jersey USA” is here.

The paper Trawl and eDNA assessment of marine fish diversity, seasonality, and relative abundance in coastal New Jersey, USA by Mark Stoeckle, Jason Adolf, Zachary Charlop-Powers, Keith Dunton, Gregory Hinks, and Stacy VanMorter appears today open access in the Journal of Marine Science. A press release summarizes the findings: “Study Proves Bits of DNA in Seawater Correlate to the Weight of Netted Fish; eDNA makes the ocean a sea of biological information.”

National Fisherman May 14, 2020 Genetic markers reveal Brazilian cownose rays, Gulf kingfish in New Jersey waters Kirk Moore

Agencia EFE (via El Diario, Spain) El analísis de ADN medioambiental detecta migraciones de especies marinas https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/analisis-ADN-medioambiental-migraciones-especies_0_1026448521.html

Prensa Latina, Cuba Descubren nuevos patrones de migración de especies marinas tropicales https://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?o=rn&id=365583&SEO=descubren-nuevos-patrones-de-migracion-de-especies-marinas-tropicales

Globedia, Spain Detectan migraciones de especies marinas gracias al ADN medioambiental http://globedia.com/detectan-migraciones-especies-marinas-gracias-adn-medioambiental

Revista Planeta, Brazil  Arraia típica do Brasil está chegando perto da costa de Nova York https://www.revistaplaneta.com.br/arraia-tipica-do-brasil-esta-chegando-perto-da-costa-de-nova-york/

DIVE Magazine, UK DNA Traces Prove To Be Useful Tool in Understanding Fish Populations http://divemagazine.co.uk/eco/8973-tracking-and-tracing-in-the-ocean-using-dna-residue

Journalist Eric Niler publishes a good feature in Wired magazine on eDNA that includes coverage of the work of PHE’s Mark Stoeckle:

‘Environmental DNA’ Lets Scientists Probe Underwater Life
With the help of a new kind of drone, marine biologists can sequence DNA found in the ocean to reveal what’s living in an ecosystem—and what’s missing.