FSBI symposium 2019: What the eDNA community has found...

This year’s highly acclaimed FSBI symposium took place in Hull, one of the UK’s award winning cultural cities. In the short five days, researchers from all of the world, from America to Japan, shared and discussed new and developing projects covering all aspects of fish and fisheries with eDNA.

Some MarianiLab team members also presented their research. Stefano Mariani highlighted the use of metabarcoding for studying the diet of mesopelagic fish, Charles Baillie covered his work with the British Antarctic Survey and the new eDNA frontier in Antarctica, Naiara presented her work in expanding the database of Brazil river fish and using eDNA to monitor the diverse aquatic ecosystems of Brazil. Rupert Collins explained how we can use eDNA with long term historical data and ecological data to understand current fish stocks.

In addition, world leading experts such as: Mikasa Miya, Chris Jerde and Kristy Deiner led talks ranging from the use of primers, sampling methods and the conceptual understanding of how we should talk about and use eDNA.

Also represented were both the American Fisheries Society and the Japanese Fisheries society, of whom had a small host of visiting students that were given FSBI grants to visit conferences abroad.

“eDNA works, get going!”.

Chris Jerde delivered one of the most straight and to the point conclusions. A conclusion that was extracted from the executive summary of the 1st US national conference on marine eDNA! Although, this conclusion was reached even when factoring in the many variables and combinations the field of eDNA has, and still is, progressing at a increasing speed by researchers all over the world. All that is really left is to keep pushing forward the magnanimous research that has come so far in such a small time period. We at The MarianiLab looks forward to help push forward our boundaries of knowledge and contribute to this amazing group of scientists to the FSBI and friends!