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Importance of heterotrophic planktonic communities in a mussel culture environment: the Grande Entrée lagoon, Magdalen Islands (Québec, Canada)

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Abstract

Mussel culture in coastal environments relies on the availability of food of sufficient quality and quantity. Both to determine this availability and to examine impacts that this aquaculture practice may have on the environment, it is important to have good knowledge of the type of plankton communities present in aquaculture sites. It is usually thought that phytoplankton make up the bulk of mussel diet in many of these sites. Here we show that the Grande-Entrée lagoon [Magdalen Islands, Gulf of St Lawrence (GSL), Canada], where commercial mussel culture has been on-going since 1980, differs from this pattern. Heterotrophic protists dominate for most of the summer-early fall season (apart from short diatom bursts), with a high average biomass of 160 mg C m−3. The dominance of small-sized phytoplankton cells (notably green algae), low nutrient concentrations (e.g. 0.3 μM NO −3 on average) and high biomass of heterotrophic protists (mostly naked ciliates and tintinnids) all point to the importance of the microbial food web in this shallow marine environment. Sustained cultivation of suspended mussels in the lagoon suggests that these heterotrophic protists could be an important source of food for the mussels, supplementing the small amount of phytoplankton present.

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Acknowledgments

We thank O. Pitre for his help with sampling, F. Blouin and S. Leblanc for technical advice and help in the field and in the laboratory, G. Tita for his help. This study was funded by an Action concertée en Sciences et Technologies de la Mer (Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies) grant to V. Koutitonsky, S. Roy et al., by ISMER, by RAQ (Réseau Aquaculture Québec) and by SODIM (SOciété de Développement de l’Industrie Maricole). We also thank Québec Océan for financial support of A. Trottet.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences de la Mer, Université du Québec à Rimouski, 310 allée des Ursulines, C.P. 3300, Rimouski, QC, Canada, G5L 3A1

    Aurore Trottet & Suzanne Roy

  2. Centre Spécialisé des pêches, C.P. 220, Grande-Riviere, QC, Canada, G0C 1V0

    Eric Tamigneaux

  3. Québec Océan, Département de Biologie, Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, QC, Canada, G1K 7P4

    Connie Lovejoy

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  1. Aurore Trottet
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  2. Suzanne Roy
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  3. Eric Tamigneaux
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  4. Connie Lovejoy
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Correspondence to Suzanne Roy.

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Communicated by R. J. Thompson, St. John's.

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Trottet, A., Roy, S., Tamigneaux, E. et al. Importance of heterotrophic planktonic communities in a mussel culture environment: the Grande Entrée lagoon, Magdalen Islands (Québec, Canada). Mar Biol 151, 377–392 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-006-0494-y

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