Aquaculture releases nitrogen to the marine environment, potentially changing dynamics of local plankton populations and causing adverse impacts. Metatranscriptomics have been used to study planktonic nutrient cycles and community dynamics. We hypothesised that the metatranscriptome could be used to monitor changing phytoplankton physiology near leases. To test this hypothesis, opportunistic samples were collected from one oceanic location in winter and one estuarine location in spring and analysed via RNASeq. Transcriptomes from different locations were found to have little overlap, due to different community compositions in the oceanic and estuarine locations. Transcript function was similar at each location. Proximity to the salmon pen had little influence over the transcriptome at the estuarine location. In the oceanic environment, diatom-based activity decreased near pens and dinoflagellate-based activity increased as demonstrated through the abundance of carbon fixation and nitrogen-acquisition-related transcripts. Our initial results suggest that the use of the metatranscriptome in monitoring is promising.

水产养殖向海洋环境释放氮，可能会改变当地浮游生物种群的动态并造成不利影响。元转录组学已被用于研究浮游营养循环和群落动态。我们假设元转录组可用于监测租约附近浮游植物生理学的变化。为了验证这一假设，我们在冬季从一个海洋位置和春季一个河口位置收集了机会样本，并通过 RNASeq 进行了分析。由于海洋和河口位置的群落组成不同，发现来自不同位置的转录组几乎没有重叠。每个位置的转录功能相似。靠近鲑鱼围栏对河口位置的转录组几乎没有影响。在海洋环境中，大量的碳固定和氮获取相关转录物证明，围栏附近基于硅藻的活性降低，基于甲藻的活性增加。我们的初步结果表明，在监测中使用宏转录组是有希望的。