CIEROW

Our lab presents sandlance research at LFC48 in Quebec!

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20 June 2025. Members of the Baumann lab just returned from the 48th Annual Larval Fish Conference, which was organized this year by Early Life History Section members from the Université du Quebec in Quebec City. This small, international conference convened experts from 16 countries and all career stages  dedicated to better understand processes governing fish early life stages (eggs, embryos, larvae, juveniles).

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Le Chateau Fontenac is one of Quebec City's most distinctive landmarks

This year, our lab was represented by Hannes, Lucas, Emma, and Vicki - with the latter 3 doing a great job communicating the early findings of their PhD theses research via oral and poster presentations. Lucas shared genomic findings of sand lance in the Hudson Bay and from CO2-sensitivity experiments. Emma presented first insights of experimental research on the inshore sand lance species, and Vicki showed that in- and offshore sandlance species might mix more than previously thought. In addition, Emma helped organize and conduct a well received panel discussion for early career scientists about the art of reviewing and publishing.

Quebec is an incredibly picturesque, historic city - and all of us were lucky to be treated with a banquet dinner at the Quebec Parliament at the end of the conference. Well done, all!

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Participants of the LFC48 at the meeting room at the Hotel Concorde

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Conference banquet at the Quebec City Parliament

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Hannes and Lucas at the revolving restaurant "La Ciel" on top of the hotel

Oral and Poster Presentations at LFC48

  • Jones, L.F., Schembri, S., Bouchard, C., and Baumann, H. 2025. What sand lance species inhabits the Hudson Bay System in the Canadian Arctic? Oral presentation.
  • You, V., Batta-Lona, P., O'Donnell, T., and Baumann, H. 2025. Identifying sand lance species and their distributions in the Northwest Atlantic using real-time PCR (qPCR). Poster. /li>
  • Jones, L.F., Murray, C.S., Zavell, M.D., Siegfried, E., Therkildsen, N.O., and Baumann, H. 2025. Is there a genomic basis to CO2 sensitivity in the Northern sand lance? Poster.
  • Siegfried, E. and Baumann, H. 2025. Temperature effects on the time to hatch in American sand lance (Ammodytes americanus). Poster.

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Quebec City and the mighty St. Lawrence River at night

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Emma moderating the Early Career workshop

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Lucas, Hannes, Emma & Vicki

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Summer in the historic streets of Quebec City

Trawling for sand lance at the Revolution offshore wind field

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6 September 2024. During the first research cruise of the CIEROW group on board the R/V Connecticut, our lab deployed a box trawl in- and outside the Revolution Wind field for a total of 7 times and 5 different locations. The box trawl had a 6 mm cod-end and tickler chains to catch small benthic fish – specifically sand lance of the genus Ammodytes.

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Research crew on CRW09-24 (fltr: Xavier Warren, Hannes Baumann, Evan Ward, Jessica Vorse, Michael Whitney, Bridget Holohan, Michael Cappola, Paola Batta-Lona)

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On 4 September, the sun sets at the Revolution wind field, still under construction

The box trawl was deployed from the main deck winch of the R/V Connecticut, with approximately 200m of wire let out in stations with water depths ranging from 34 – 38m, trawl speeds of 2 – 2.5kn for 13-15 upon reaching full wire-out lengths. Total trawl time (trawl in water – out of water) was about 25 minutes. During light hours, the trawl was equipped with a GoPro (Hero 4) to obtain footage of the trawled seafloor and potential organisms.

Overall, the trawl worked well with the ship and deployed as intended over the bottom. The GoPro footage revealed mostly sandy/muddy substrates with surprisingly little benthic fish life. Sand lance were neither caught in the trawl nor seen on the videos. Most trawls caught only few organisms, with the exception of Trawl 3 at station R6, which collected a number of common benthic fishes such as two hake species, one skate, sea robin and scup.

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The box trawl stands on the deck of the R/V Connecticut

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Fish species caught at Trawl 03 at station R6 on 4th September 2024 (9:30 PM): Northern (1) red hake (Urophycis chuss), (2) thorny skate (Leucoraja erinacea), (3) silver hake (Merluccius bilinearis), (4) red hake juvenile, (5) butterfish (Peprilus triacanthus), (6) scup (Stenotomus chrysops), (7) Northern sea robin (Prionotus carolinus). Gridded background has 5 mm squares.

For this first deployment, we were cautious operating the gear in safe areas, but probably ended up trawling over sandy/muddy sediments that are not good habitat for sand lance. For the next cruise, we will therefore aim to alter trawl locations to include stations with known gravel or coarser sediment types.

A special thanks to Joel Llopiz and Lyndsey Lefebvre from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who kindly lent us the box trawl to fish for sand lance, and to Justin Suca for facilitating this. We are also grateful to Marco, Sam, John and Luke from the R/V Connecticut crew for helping to deploy this new gear, even in somewhat rougher seas.