Detection and distribution of the North Atlantic capelin (Mallotus villosus) using environmental DNA—comparison with data from the main fishery management survey

Abstract

Capelin (Mallotus villosus) is both an important commercial and ecological resource of the North Atlantic subpolar region. Two decades ago, the stock distribution around Iceland drastically changed. During autumn, which corresponds to the main feeding period, the capelin stock was previously located between the North of Iceland and the Jan Mayen area. Since the beginning of 2000s, the feeding aggregation has been located at the east coast of Greenland, inducing slight changes in the timing and route of the capelin spawning migration along the Icelandic shelf, and therefore in the catches. Changes in the distribution of capelin around Iceland made it both more difficult and expensive to assess the distribution of the stock with current survey methods. Here, we compare environmental DNA (eDNA) data to the acoustic data collected during the autumn monitoring survey, which leads to a preliminary estimation of the stock size. eDNA samples were collected at five different depths and were analyzed both horizontally across latitudes and longitudes and vertically across depth profiles. We detected eDNA in most of the locations where acoustic data detected capelin. Generalized linear models suggested that eDNA concentrations can be used as a proxy for the detection and quantification of capelin. The horizontal distribution of eDNA observed during both years corresponds with the horizontal distribution of capelin registered with the acoustic approach, while the vertical distribution indicated both effects of oceanic currents and diel vertical migration on eDNA detection and quantification.

Perspectives on implementation of eDNA methods in Northeast Atlantic marine monitoring

“…Nordic institutions and researchers are involved in many international initiatives applying eDNA methods to marine research and monitoring and in the recent years, there has been a steady increase in the application of eDNA methods to marine research in the Northeast Atlantic (Salter et al 2019;Turon et al 2022;Pampoulie et al 2023). However, there has been little consistency in the methodology as different projects follow different protocols for sampling, storage, data management etc.…”