Crowdsourcing capelin: New website to alert biologists to locations of 'key' fish

If you're out searching for capelinthis season, your efforts can help scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Ecapelin.ca is a new websitethat allows people to upload photos and locations of the fish.

"It's citizen science so we can find out where and when capelin are spawning all around the island," said Christina Bourne, aquatic biologist with DFO.

"For us, we can't be at every beach all the time. So we want to know where and when the capelin are."

The info gathered from the public can help scientists get an idea of how the population is doing and if the capelin's spawning time has changed, Bourne said.

The pictures and locations uploaded to ecapelin.ca will be processed and verified by a scientist.

"Right now, it could be that if we find outcapelinare rolling on a beach nearby, we send someone out to get somecapelinif we need some samples," Bourne said.

"Then in the future, we're going to look at if they rolled somewhere in the past, are they still coming there? Are they coming into a different beach? So it'll get us information about how they've changed over time."

'A key forage fish'

Capelindata is valuable because the fish plays a major role inkeeping oceans healthy.

"They're what we call a key forage fish. So it means they're pretty much one of the main diet components of cod, seabirds, seals, whales. So in Newfoundland waters, capelin is the main prey fish. So it's really important that we keep that stock healthy to feed everything else," Bourne said.

"They're the ones that eat the plankton and bring that energy up the food chain to everything else."

The website is a partnership with the St. LawrenceGlobal Observatory and WWF Canada, and includes Quebec and all of Atlantic Canada.

Every year, DFO does an acoustic survey of capelin offshore, and they do a lot of work inshore in Trinity Bay looking at larval capelin, Bourne said.

She said moving forward there will be more work done and an even bigger survey is planned for 2018.

"We're learning more about them every year," Bourne said.