I am a University of Toronto Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Rochman lab (St. George campus) and the McMeans lab (Mississauga campus) as part of the pELAstics project. I study how microplastic exposure affects the structure and energy flow within lake food webs using stable isotopes and fatty acids analyses.
During my doctoral work, completed as of April 2021 at the University of Victoria, I addressed gaps in ecologically relevant issues pertaining to microplastics occurrence in the marine environment. For example, this included work on microplastics presence and sources in seafood and in marine food webs, as well as the resulting implications for marine ecological communities and human food production. My work compared sampling methodologies to inform the measurement of microplastics in seawater, assessed the link between plastic use in the shellfish aquaculture industry and microplastic concentrations in nearby clams and oysters, and probed questions surrounding bioaccumulation and biomagnification of microplastics in food webs. In addition to my dissertation research, I collaborated with others to synthesize the sources of microplastics in the human diet, critically reviewed publishing practices in microplastics research, and conducted an analysis of microplastics ingestion in global fishes across multiple trophic levels.
Moving forward, I am highly interested in using statistical methods to determine how anthropogenic stressors, including microplastics, are interacting with aquatic ecology. I strongly believe that interpreting stochastic models and their uncertainty can lead to insight into the fate of contaminants in aquatic ecosystems, and the ways in the presence of these contaminants might influence ecological functioning. I strive to use the mechanistic and predictive capabilities of such models to provide conservation managers and policymakers with the simplified frameworks required to protect aquatic ecosystems.
Garth Covernton, Postdoctoral Fellow 