The Saguenay Fjord is an exceptional environment for the wildlife, plant life and humans that call it home or who are simply passing through. It’s both a unique natural ecosystem in Quebec and an essential navigable waterway for the economy of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region and the province of Quebec as a whole. The Saguenay Fjord is utilized in several ways, including for recreational fishing, tourism, and recreational, commercial and industrial boating. Nevertheless, and despite its strategic and unique environmental, economic and social position, we know very little about its wildlife and habits, or the effects of human activity on the health of this exceptional ecosystem. This gap in knowledge is precisely what motivated us to create the Saguenay Fjord Ecosystem Research Group (GREFS).

One aspect of our work is having the Industrial-Port Centre of Expertise (CEIP) implement the Enviro-Actions™ model, under the direction of Julie Carrière, executive director of INREST and the CEIP. The Enviro-Actions™ Saguenay pilot project strives to introduce a preventive environmental management model, provide tools and systems for preventive management, set up environmental alerts, and study underwater noise. Moreover, to enhance the acquisition of new scientific knowledge, the CEIP is partnering up with two university laboratories with complimentary expertise. Namely, the Laboratoire de recherche sur l’écosystème du Fjord du Saguenay (Écofjord), created by the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) under the leadership of Pascal Sirois, a full professor with the faculty of basic sciences at UQAC and Research Chair on Exploited Aquatic Species. This laboratory’s fields of expertise are the ecology of fish species, fishing activities, the biological productivity of pelagic environments, trophodynamism and the quality of aquatic habitats. The second laboratory is the Université Laval’s Laboratoire d’écologie et de biodiversité aquatique (biome) under the leadership of Philippe Archambault, a full professor with the faculty of biology at Université Laval. Its fields of expertise are marine biodiversity, the functioning of marine ecosystems, the ecology of benthic invertebrates and the study of multiple stressors on the health of the environment.