EMILY CORMIER
MASTERS CANDIDATE
Shark Nursery Habitat and Remote Sensing
Lotze Lab of Marine Ecology
Dalhousie University: Department of Biology
Dalhousie University resides on the Mi’kma’ki territory of the Mi’kmaq people
Lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) in Bimini have been shown to use mangrove and shallow seagrass habitat as nursery areas, with juveniles showing philopatry to specific nursery sites. However, over the past several decades, dredging and development have removed or disturbed large areas of mangroves and seagrass, potentially impacting the lemon shark’s use of this habitat. This project uses satellite remote sensing to create habitat maps from the late 1990s to 2020 and will pair these maps with annual standardized mark-recapture data and fin-clip isotope samples to understand the long-term impacts of change in habitat availability on juvenile lemon shark survival and diet.
