Ekuanitshit

In collaboration with the Innu community of Ekuanitshit, our research examines how environmental change and hydroelectric development can influence trace element and mercury (Hg) dynamics in coastal and freshwater ecosystems of the Romaine River region, located on the Innu land of Nitassinan (ᓂᑕᔅᓯᓇᓐ, "Our land") in eastern Québec, Canada. Through field-based monitoring across salinity gradients and along a series of hydroelectric reservoirs, we investigate the drivers of bioaccumulation in key local food resources and aquatic biomonitors, including soft-shell clams and zooplankton. Our work aims to better understand patterns of total mercury and methylmercury (MeHg) exposure, assess potential nutritional benefits and health risks associated with consumption, and provide scientific insight into how environmental conditions and shifts in aquatic communities may shape contaminant transfer through food webs over time.

• Environmental drivers of essential and non-essential trace element bioaccumulation in soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) in eastern Canada and implications for human consumption
• Increased methylmercury bioaccumulation and zooplankton community shifts along a boreal multi-reservoir system
• A first run-of-river hydropower plant development in a permafrost-rich subarctic Canadian region: short-term fate of mercury and carbon (2025)
• A genome catalogue of mercury-methylating bacteria and archaea from sediments of a boreal river facing human disturbances (2024)