Marine Resources of Kouchibouguac National Park: Extended Summary

Abstract

Kouchibouguac National Park is located on the east coast of New Brunswick, Canada It includes 25 kilometers of barrier islands/sand dunes which shelter three lagoons and face the Gulf of St. Lawrence on their seaward side. Three rivers and five main streams flow into these lagoons within the park boundaries. This report is intended to provide a broad scientific basis for managing the marine/estuarine resources of the park, as well as baseline data for monitoring purposes. It includes reviews of related literature. An intensive sampling program was conducted over the months of June, July and August of 1975, with some additional sampling of fish in November. It included observations on bathymetry, tides, currents, temperature, salinity, sediment grain size, infauna and epifauna, small fish, algal flora, submerged angiosperms (Zostera marina, Ruppia maritima), nutrients, dissolved oxygen. shellfish (clams, blue mussels, periwinkles, oysters, crab, lobster) and exploitable fish (alewife, striped bass, Atlantic salmon, trout, smelt, tomcod, flounder, eel, sucker). The basic program for sampling immobile biota (e.g. seaweeds) and biota with relatively limited movement (e.g., clams, mussels) consisted of sampling and observations at 61 lagoon stations pinpointed on a map before the field trips and distributed to give representation of the lagoon as a whole but without reference to special features or sub-environments, and at ten additional stations chosen to provide some representation of the channels leading from the rivers (which occupy only a small fraction of the total lagoon area) and of the rivers above the lagoon. Additional or separate studies were conducted on several species, e.g., soft shelled clams (Mya arenaria). Fish were sampled using a beach seine, nets and eel traps and crab and lobster with traps. Ages at length of selected fish species were determined by counts of annual rings on otoliths or by separation of polymodal length frequencies. The original data are included in the report as well as interpretive statistics and charts and maps showing locations of sampling stations and species distributions. The full 432 page report is available separately.