Project Leaders:    
Ben Koop, William Davidson, Stig Omholt

Lead Institutions:    
University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, CIGENE (Norway)

Research Funding Program:    
Competition III

GE³LS Activity:
GE³LS and Public Engagement

Salmonids are members of the Salmonidae family and include the whitefishes and ciscos, graylings, and trout, salmon and charr. Although Atlantic salmon is the main aquaculture species on both the west and east coasts of Canada, there are important markets for rainbow trout and charr elsewhere in the country. There are also vibrant commercial fisheries for wild salmonids and the tourism industry also relies heavily on sports fisheries in many parts of the country. As salmonid aquaculture continues to expand, it must find ways of minimizing its impact on wild fisheries and the environment. There is a need for domesticated stocks that are resistant to disease, adapt to local Canadian environments and minimize escape and impact on wild populations. A better understanding of how natural populations of salmonids adapt to local conditions will benefit agencies that have to make decisions about stocks and harvesting plans.

There are also fundamental scientific questions that can be explored using salmonid genomes. The common ancestor of salmonids underwent genome duplication between 20 and 120 million years ago and extant species may be considered pseudo-tetraploid because they are in the process of reverting to a stable diploid state. Therefore, they are ideal organisms to examine the early impact of a genome duplication event that is considered to have played a pivotal role in generating gene diversity and functional specialization. The analysis of this project will help resolve how a genome reorganizes itself to cope with duplicated chromosomes and gene dosage effects and the importance of gene duplications for evolution.

cGRASP will extend and expand genomic resources so they are applicable to all salmonids and enable cross-species comparisons of genome structure. Specifically, the project will build physical and genetic maps with the associated genomic resources for Atlantic and Pacific salmon and trout. The researchers will build comparative genomic resources for rainbow smelt, a representative of the common ancestor of salmonids. These expanded genomic tools will answer fundamental scientific questions as well as those that are of economic and social importance to aquaculture, conservation and the environment.

To address the ethical, economic, and social issues of the scientific research, cGRASP researchers will collaborate with Patricia Gallaugher at SFU’s Centre for Coastal Studies and the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at UBC. The Centre for Coastal Studies hosts science-based workshops with a focus on sound policy for sustainable resource management. cGRASP will co-sponsor a series of ‘Speaking for the Salmon’ workshops in various locations to discuss the management of wild salmon for conservation and protection of biodiversity.

The cGRASP researchers will also work with the UBC team to help understand how people incorporate worldviews and norms to make moral decisions about a policy. This work will also seek to determine what makes different judgments understandable.