Application of environmental DNA monitoring for describing stock fluctuations of commercially important demersal fish in Faroese waters

The project represents an ongoing effort to develop the application of environmental DNA monitoring for commercially important fish species in Faroese waters. It builds on the results of two previously funded projects funded by fiskivinniroyndir: Cod-e-DNA and Bank-e-DNA that have shown quantitative eDNA monitoring can describe biomass dynamics of commercially important fish stocks. The project aims to consolidate the existing time-series over a 3 year period to build a 5-year time series of eDNA measurements on the Faroe Bank. Additionally it will aim to use the existing catalogue of samples, in addition to those collected as part of the future monitoring effort, to apply next generation sequencing approaches to study the entire community of marine fish on the Faroe Bank in order to see if stock patterns can be linked to ecosystem dynamics. In order to meet the overall objective of stock eDNA the specific project aims are
1. Collect eDNA water samples alongside parallel Spring and Summer demersal trawl surveys to construct a five year time-series on the Faroe Bank
2. Apply quantitative PCR assays developed in previous projects for Atlantic cod (cod-eDNA) and haddock (Bank-eDNA) to establish if eDNA can be used to track stock recovery.
3. Apply next generation sequencing approaches on archived and future samples to describe ecosystem dynamics on the Faroe Bank in relation to patterns of stock recovery.