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THE OCCURRENCE OF HIGH LEVELS OF LIPIDS IN FUNDULUS HETERCLITUS FROM A HIGHLY PCB CONTAIMINATED SITE
Citation:
Huber, M, T R. Gleason, B J. Bergen, AND R A. McKinney. THE OCCURRENCE OF HIGH LEVELS OF LIPIDS IN FUNDULUS HETERCLITUS FROM A HIGHLY PCB CONTAIMINATED SITE. Presented at AFS Southern New England Chapter Meeting, Coastal Institute, University Of Rhode Island, Graduate School Of Oceanography, Narragansett RI, January 12, 2000.
Description:
A population model constructed by Munns et al. (1997) for Fundulus heteroclitus predicts that populations in severely impacted ecosystems such as New Bedford Harbor, a highly PCB contaminated Superfund site, should be under severe stress. However, cursory assessment of the fish populations in New Bedford Harbor reveals a high density of individuals inhabiting this estuary. The Atlantic Ecology Division (AED) of the EP A has begun a series of research activities which include obtaining information on Fundulus populations from New Bedford Harbor to determine whether site-specific parameterization would improve the predictive power of the population model. The parameters of interest are age structure, age specific mortality, and age specific reproduction. As part of this research a field study and a laboratory experiment were conducted to investigate young-of-the-year overwinter mortality. The results of these studies clearly demonstrated that fish from New Bedford Harbor have much higher energetic reserves than reference fish and that, at least in a laboratory experiment, this higher energetic content was correlated with much higher survivability during winter conditions. The cause for the differences in lipid storage of New Bedford Harbor fish versus reference fish does not appear to be related to food quantity/quality differences at the different sites and is currently under investigation.