Assessing shifts in the intertidal fish communities of Port Moody Arm

The intertidal fish communities of Port Moody Arm have been exposed to a range of stressors stemming from a long history of industrialisation in the Burrard Inlet. In the last decade, the Arm has seen important changes in industry such as the closure of the Burrard Thermal Power Plant and the Flavelle sawmill. I hypothesize that these changes will in turn affect the intertidal fish communities. Using the same methods as the ones used in a 2010 survey, we conducted bi-weekly beach seines at five sites around the Arm throughout the summer of 2022. Overall, I found that species diversity and richness had significantly increased between 2010 and 2022. I also observed that most species were captured more frequently in 2022 than in 2010. I did not find a significant difference in abundance. This report outlines the importance of continued monitoring in the Arm to examine population trends of intertidal fish.