Biological fish sampling, fish, seal and beluga stomach content analysis

Objectives of the Requirement

The contractor will use proper scientific protocols to provide targeted analysis including

1. taxonomic identification including:

• Arctic benthic marine invertebrates and zooplankton
• Arctic marine, freshwater and estuarine species of fish
• Pathogen and Parasite infracommunity identification and analyses
• Able to process degraded and partial samples often found in stomachs

2. biological sampling,

• Morphometrics
• Fecundity
• Levels of Identification for use in peer-reviewed scientific publications.
• Performing fish ageing of arctic and sub-arctic species of fish

Other analyses include: Stomach content analysis of whales, seals, fish and larger invertebrate stomachs and rare species. and stomach content analysis) of Arctic fish, stomach contents of Harvested beluga whales, seals, fish or large invertebrates as required.

Scope of Work

Six separate researchers will be providing frozen samples to the contractor for fish, seal, and whale sample processing, including full processing, otilith extraction, stomach content analysis, and data analysis.

Conditional Set-Aside under the Federal Government Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB)

This is an open tender. However, it will be conditionally set-aside under the Government of Canada’s Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) if two or more bids have been received by Indigenous businesses who are certified under the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) criteria and who may be listed in the Government of Canada’s Indigenous Business Directory (https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1100100033057/1610797769658).

If your Indigenous business is not yet registered in the Indigenous Business Directory, please do so at the link provided above. If bids from two or more Indigenous businesses are compliant with the terms of the Request for Proposal, the contracting authority will limit the competition to those Indigenous businesses and will not consider bids from any non-Indigenous businesses that may have been submitted.

If the bids from the Indigenous businesses are found to be non-compliant or non-responsive or are withdrawn, such that fewer than two compliant bids from Indigenous businesses remain, bids from all of the non-Indigenous businesses that had submitted bids will then be considered by the contracting authority.