Promoting Sustainable Management of Fishery Resources

The St. Lawrence offers exceptional opportunities for those interested in trying out sport fishing or taking it up again after a period of inactivity. The project brings together initiatives targeting the development and promotion of sport fishing on the St. Lawrence. The striped bass (french only) represents the species with the greatest potential for developing sport fishing in the coming years. For example, the new presence of striped bass south of the Gaspésie offers the opportunity to develop sport fishing in this region of Quebec. In addition, following the success of the program to reintroduce a new striped bass population in the St. Lawrence Estuary (french only), it will be necessary to establish the conditions required for opening sport fishing of this species.

The monitoring of the evolution of seabass sport fishing allow to evaluate the impact on this population and to enhance access to this sport in Gaspesie. The project led to many scientific articles:

Vanalderweireldt, L., Winkler, G., Mingelbier, M., Sirois, P. 2019a. Early growth, mortality, and partial migration of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) larvae and juveniles in the St. Lawrence estuary, Canada. ICES Journal of Marine Science 76(7): 2235–2246 https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsz116 

Vanalderweireldt, L., Winkler, G., Mingelbier, M., Sirois, P. 2019b. Feeding ecology of early life stages of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) along an estuarine salinity-turbidity gradient, St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada. Journal of Plankton Research 41(4): 507–520 https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbz031 

Vanalderweireldt, L., Winkler, G., Forget-Lacoursière, E.-L., Mingelbier, M., Sirois, P. 2020. Habitat use by early life stages of the re-established striped bass and conspecific fish species along the St. Lawrence estuary. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science vol. 237 doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2020.106696  

The purpose of this project is to maintain an inventory of all existing databases on marine, freshwater and diadromous stocks, marine and freshwater habitats and activities and other information relating to salt water and freshwater fishery resources. The objective of this initiative is to increase the transparency of the scientific data used to inform decisions about managing fishery resources.

Read the backgrounder for this project.

The aim of this project is to support fishery resource managers in the governments of Canada and Quebec in sharing their expertise with each other and with experts from academia and at research centres.

Read the backgrounder for this project.

This project involves establishing a network to facilitate exchanges between stakeholders in the fishery resources sector on issues such as ecocertification, traceability, industry rationalization, product marketing, sustainable fishing and resource conservation tools. This initiative will support the sustainable development of fishery resources while promoting the convergence of multiple objectives and visions.

Read the backgrounder for this project.