[LINK] "Maritime sea life linked to early European explorers"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News' Shane Fowler reports on an interesting finding suggesting that the marine ecologies of the east coast were created unwittingly by discharges of ballast water from early European visitors' ships.

Two major food sources for millions of birds and fish in the Bay of Fundy may have been brought to the Maritimes unwittingly by early European explorers.

​Research from the University of New Brunswick suggests mud shrimp and mud worms are invasive species from Europe carried across the Atlantic in ship ballasts, perhaps that of Samuel de Champlain.

"There's no way to tell for sure," said researcher Tony Einfeldt, "but it very well could have been him."

Einfeldt's conclusion comes from genetic analysis — comparing the genes of the Bay of Fundy populations of mud shrimp and mud worms to those on European coastlines.

"We can tell where they came from because the genetic identity of both species in the Bay of Fundy matches that of those in Europe," he said.

[. . .]

Einfeldt's genetic work has been able to pinpoint several introductions of these species along the East Coast.

"The Bay of Fundy populations most likely came from France and the Bay of Biscay," he said.

"A second introduction that occurred in the Gulf of Maine is more likely from northern Europe, like the Norway, Germany, Denmark area," said Einfeldt.