Good News — Bad News: Combined Ocean Change Drivers Decrease Survival but Have No Negative Impact on Nutritional Value and Organoleptic Quality of the Northern Shrimp

Abstract

Nutritional and organoleptic qualities (taste, smell, texture, appearance) are key characteristics of seafood when it comes to defining consumer choices. These qualities, which are determined by the biochemical properties of the seafood, can be altered by environmental conditions, such as those imposed by ongoing global ocean change. However, these effects have rarely been studied despite their potential important economic and dietary implications: many human communities depend upon seafood as a primary source of nutrition and/or income from the associated seafood industry. The Northern shrimp, Pandalus borealis, makes the 3rd most valuable fishery in Eastern Canada, and figures among the most important fisheries in the NorthEastern Atlantic. This study aimed to determine the impact of combined ocean warming, acidification and hypoxia on (a) muscle mineral content as proxy for nutritional quality, and (b) the taste, smell, texture, and appearance as proxies for organoleptic quality of this commercially important species. These proxies were determined after an exposure of 30 days under laboratory conditions to different ocean global change scenarios of temperature (2, 6, and 10 • C), pH (7.75 and 7.4) and oxygen (100 and 35% relative to air saturation), in isolation and in combination. Shrimp survival was significantly lower (68%) for shrimp exposed to warming and low pH, and even lower (37%) when hypoxia was superimposed, compared to an average survival of 88% for all other treatments. Mineral contents were globally higher in shrimp exposed to the highest temperature, while organoleptic attributes were comparable across all scenarios tested. Thus, while we do not expect nutritional value and organoleptic quality of shrimp, broadly speaking, to be altered by global changes even in areas where conditions will correspond to our warmest (10 • C) and lowest pH (7.4) scenarios, the lower survival rate we report could negatively impact the viability of shrimp populations and consequently the shrimp industry. This may be particularly true for areas that are currently becoming or are expected to become hypoxic.

The lack of genetic variation underlying thermal transcriptomic plasticity suggests limited adaptability of the Northern shrimp, Pandalus borealis

“…Temperature-mediated gene expression changes have been reported in several ectotherm species (e.g., Gleason and Burton, 2015;Veilleux et al, 2015;Oostra et al, 2018;Sirovy et al, 2021;Valenza-Troubat et al, 2022). Our results are also in agreement with previous studies showing physiological responses of P. borealis to temperature, including changes in cellular energetic metabolism, and metabolic and growth rates (Chabot and Ouellet, 2005;Ouellet and Chabot, 2005;Arnberg et al, 2013;Dupont-Prinet et al, 2013;Chemel et al, 2020).…”

“…Mortality data used in this study originate from Chemel et al (2020) and Guscelli et al (submitted for review). We performed an univariate two-ways ANOVA test on arcsin square-root transformed percentage values (Sokal and Rohlf, 1995) to investigate how temperature affected shrimp mortality and molting rates per day, with Origin and Temperature as fixed factor tested in isolation and combined (Origin × Temperature).…”

“…Adults and juveniles experience temperatures ranging from−1.7 to 11.1°C but are found to be most abundant between 0 and 5°C in the northwest Atlantic (Allen, 1959;Haynes and Wigley, 1969;Shumway et al, 1985;Garcia, 2007). Previous studies have shown that P. borealis is sensitive to increasing temperature, resulting in reduced survival, lowered recruitment, increased growth and metabolism rates (Chabot and Ouellet, 2005;Ouellet and Chabot, 2005;Daoud et al, 2007Daoud et al, , 2010Richards, 2012;Arnberg et al, 2013;Dupont-Prinet et al, 2013;Chemel et al, 2020). As a consequence, an important reduction in abundance has been observed over the last decade in the species southern distribution (Apollonio et al, 1986;Koeller, 2000;DFO, 2021DFO, , 2022Richards and Hunter, 2021).…”

Evaluation of distiller's dried grains with solubles in diets for Pacific white shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, reared under pond conditions

“…In global market, nutritional and organoleptic qualities (taste, smell, texture, and appearance) can be an important differentiator when it comes to defining consumer choice (Chemel et al, 2020). The results of organoleptic analysis in this research showed that there were no significant differences in terms of shrimp color, aroma, and flavor.…”

Diving into broad-scale and high-resolution population genomics to decipher drivers of structure and climatic vulnerability in a marine invertebrate

“…Under laboratory conditions, larvae hatch earlier and develop faster at higher temperature, but eggs show reduced hatching success (Brillon et al 2005; Ouellet and Chabot 2005; Daoud et al 2010; Arnberg et al 2013). Similarly, adults show higher metabolic rate but lower survival under elevated temperature (Chemel et al 2020; Guscelli et al 2023). The response to changing temperature, however, is not uniform within the species range.…”