Musquash Estuary Marine Protected Area Metabarcoding

The Musquash estuary is a small marine protected area in New Brunswick on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. This rich ecosystem includes freshwater, brackish, and marine environments, in addition to extensive salt marsh habitat. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been conducting eDNA metabarcoding in the MPA since 2022 to help monitor animal and macroalgae diversity.The markers used include the 12S MiFish primer set and Leray et al. COI primer set for general biodiversity. Data were sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq in 2022 and 2023, and an Illumina MiSeq in 2024 onward.