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Large scale experiments
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Ecology Institute Prizes The Ecology Institute is an international and nonprofit-making organization, with a staff of 36 ecologists-marine, terrestrial and limnetic--all of high international reputation. Neither the director nor any member of the scientific staff receives remuneration. Every year a jury composed of ECI members selects--in a rotating pattern--prize winners among marine, terrestrial or limnetic ecologists. In 1989, prize winners will be selected in the field of marine ecology. ECI strives to 1. further the exchange of information between marine, terrestrial and limnetic ecology; 2. compensate for the lack of balance between analysing and synthesizing research efforts and thus help to provide more feedback and critical overview for ecological sciences; 3. draw the attention of scientists, administrators, politicians and the general public to important issues resulting from ecological research; 4. assist in finding a long-term compromise between the increasingly destructive potential of modern industrial societies and the need for defining and applying measures to protect nature, commensurate with achieving and sustaining the highest possible living standard for man. Taking into account these aims, as well as his or her own field of interest, the winner of the Ecology Institute Prize is requested to author a 200 to 300 printed-page book, to be published by ECI in the
series 'Excellence in Ecology' and to be made available world-wide at cost price. This series' concept is different from that of textbooks. In addition to reviewing a certain field of knowledge, it give the authors a chance to express their personal views on important ecological issues, to interpret current scientific knowledge on the basis of their own experience and insight, and to tell us what, in their opinion, should be done in the future. In contrast, textbooks or handbooks must attempt to cover objectively and comprehensively a certain field of science. The Ecology Institute Prize is endowed with a stipend of USS5000. A second prize may be awarded honouring a young ecologist who has conducted and published uniquely independent, original and/or challenging research efforts representing an important scientific breakthrough: the IRPE PRIZE (International Recognition of Professional Excellence). Selection Procedure Nominations are welcome from all research ecologists. They should reach Prof. Tom Fenchel (Chairman ECI Jury), Marine Biological Laboratou, University of Copenhagen, DK-3000 Helsingor, Denmark, before July 31, 1989. All ecologists engaged in scientific research are eligible. The Jury will select the Prize Winner using the nominations received, as well as their own knowledge of top performers, and their own professional judgement.
11025-326X/89 $3.00+0.00 © 1989 Pergamon Press plc
Marine fOIlution Bulletin, Volume 20, No. 3. pp. 108-110, 1989 Printed in Great Britain.
Viewpoint is a column which allows authors to express their own opinions about current events.
Large Scale Experiments DEREK ELLIS and HJALMAR THIEL Dr Ellis is Professor of Biology in the University of Victoria, B.C., and a member of the Editorial Board of the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Professor Thiel is in charge of the deep-sea benthic programme of the Hydrobiologische Abteilung of the Institut fiir Hydrobioiogie und Fischereiwissenschaft in the University of Hamburg.
There are a number of large scale experiments being proposed for the marine environment, particularly in the context of mining. It is not surprising. We need more information for predicting the environmental consequences of engineered developments in the sea. The issue of large scale experiments as it affects marine mining raises a more general issue for society as 108
a whole. At what stage in our developing engineering capability and knowledge of environmental impact should scientists enlarge the scale of predictive experiments from present small field projects, say, on benthic colonization of artificial substrate boxes to levels which can themselves cause ecosystem changes? There is a need for expansion in scale, as shown by
Volume 20/Number 3/March 1989
various engineering catastrophes of the past decade. When Bhopal blew its storage tank, almost nothing was known of the chemical transformations of methylisocyanate to other dangerous poisons when large volumes were released to air. The radioactive blast at Chernobyl has recently been claimed by Dr. Roger Gale, the US bone-marrow surgeon, as the "last warning" that a larger, or even similar scale, accident could turn into a global crisis. Both the Bhopal and Chernobyl accidents were uncontrolled experiments; forced on the world by insufficient knowledge and care. :,Large scale, controlled, experiments can and should be made to ease decision-making whether particular types of industrial developments should proceed or not. Large scale experiments in the sea come in two types. There are scientist-derived deep sea experiments, large logistically relative to laboratory bench testing. There are also engineered developments, which really are large, as when a mine is started. We tend not to realise that any engineered development is an ecosystem experiment. The ecosystem experiment of starting a mine is almost uncontrolled in a scientific sense, although controlled in the environmental sense (by regulatory agency precautions, and appropriate monitoring). Marine mining developments need treating as experiments with good design of test and control sampling stations to monitor ecosystem changes. But, we also need relevant large-scale scientists' field experiments in the sea. The Pre-Pilot Mining Test 1979 at the Atlantis II Deep in the Red Sea was treated as a scientific experiment and monitored. A joint university-industry team assessed the impact of mud release from the shipboard concentrator. From the results, biologists demanded further impact studies at the next, larger, stage of mining development: the Pilot Mining Operation, still (in 1988) to be implemented. The scientists monitored dispersal of the tailings muds from the dredge-concentrator ship. There was a plume that had not been predicted by two different preliminary models. Only the larger scale of the Pilot Mining Operation still to come will eventually give reliable results on the fate of the plume, its far distant drift or near-distant settlement, and its sediment blanketing effect and community disturbance. Similar pre-pilot mining tests at DOMES manganese nodule sites in the Eastern Pacific have also been monitored and assessed environmentally. Regulatory agencies can now make better informed environmental decisions as a result of these two large scale experiments. There are several other large scale experiments now being proposed, two scheduled to be conducted in 1989. One was described by a team of US Scientists at the 5th Deep Sea Conference in Brest, France, in June 1988. A R U M (Remote Underwater Manipulator) will be deployed in a manganese nodule, potential mining, area initially to backfill 60 cm diameter rings with sediment sufficient to smother at least some of the organisms present. A few weeks later the R U M will be
deployed again to sample test and control (not backfilled) rings. The general hypothesis under test is that massive sediment deposition will smother some infauna, whereas other species will be able to burrow up through the deposits and survive. The experiment will demonstrate which species survive, and how they do so. It is expected that the experiment will eventually be extended to larger rings of several metres and over longer periods, say one year. Coincidentally, the investigators plan to sample still visible dredge tracks some 11 years after the DOMES pre-pilot mining test. This, however, is not experiment; but is opportunistic observational biology--good science, high tech; but still observation, not planned experiment. The combined results of experiment and observation will provide information on biological changes to be expected from nodule mining. A second experiment proposed at the Deep Sea Conference by one of us (HT) is yet larger. It is to harrow or plough a manganese nodule area (leaving the nodules behind) and test the biological consequences of the disturbance. The experimental design calls for 16 m wide tracks arranged in a many spoke star pattern with diameter of 2 nautical miles at 4200 m depth and a repeatedly disturbed centre. The star pattern gives different levels of disturbance related to distance from its central crossing point. Sampling will be within a transpondermarked field by box corer, multiple corer, trawl and baited traps. A camera deep-tow system will record epibenthic organisms and sediment surface structures. As at the DOMES site, the general hypothesis under test is that disturbance of sediment surface and massive redeposition will change the species associations present. Thereby relevant information on the scale and speed of biological loss and recovery can be obtained over many years. The results will influence decisions on eventual nodule mining; e.g. where, by what equipment, and by what dredging pattern. A third experiment may come from a proposed new development in coastal mining. For about 20 years coastal mines have opted to dispose of their waste tailings by submerged pipeline so that on discharge at depth below biological resources, a coherent density current carries on to the deepest point by continuous flow. A proposed molybdenum mine at Quartz Hill, Alaska, has requested permits for such marine discharge to a nearby deep fjord. One of the options is for discharge to a fjord of depth and size such that the tailings could raise the seabed to a level where one can reasonably hypothesize beneficial changes in fjord productivity. The appropriate environmental and mining information is available, in general and site specifically, and the engineering capability is there through the industry. There will be intensive monitoring of the changes; required by US environmental regulations, and continuing the substantial investment in preoperational risk-assessment and monitoring already made by the industry. The results would considerably increase understanding of fjord productivity, ecosystem dynamics and other fjord processes of interest fundamentally, as well as to the coastal mining industry. Yet another large scale experiment will soon be 109
Marine Pollution Bulletin
practical at Island Copper Mine in Canada. The mine is now within about 5 years of its predicted 25 year lifetime. The deep (almost 300 m) pit is only a few metres from the original fjord shoreline. One of the reclamation options is to open up the pit to the fjord so that it becomes a marine ecosystem. Here there might be an opportunity to follow not only ecosystem succession after marine inundation, but such beneficial options as extending the local salmon farm industry into the flooded pit, and managing it for maximum harvests. The point of this article is that our engineering
capability is inevitably leading us towards very large scale, even global, topographic and enviro-chemical changes. It has done so to date faster than our capability for assessment, prediction and prevention of many of the larger catastrophic changes; witness Bhopal and Chernobyl. Observational science can only conduct hindsight assessments, i.e. what happened after the event. Environmental science should be extended to large scale experiments, using not only scientistdesigned tests, but, more important, treating some appropriate industrial developments as controllable experiments in the interests of society.
Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 20. No. 3, pp. 110-115. 1989 Printed in Great Britain.
© Crowncopyright
Concentrations of Organochlorine Compounds in the Blubber of Seals from Eastern and North-eastern England, 1988 ROBIN J. LAW*, COLIN R. ALLCHIN* and JOHN HARWOODt
*Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Directorate of Fisheries Research, Fisheries Laboratory, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex CMO 8HA; t Natural Environment Research Council, Sea Mammal Research Unit, High Cross, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK
Samples of blubber from c o m m o n seals (Phoca vitulina) found dead in eastern England and grey seals (HaHchoerus grypus) found dead on the Farne Islands have been analysed for a range of organochlorine pesticides, individual chiorobiphenyl congeners and total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). N o significant differences were seen between results for the two seal species. HCB and H C H concentrations were low, and total D D T and PCB concentrations (ranging from 0 . 9 9 - 8 . 0 and 5 . 7 33 gg g-t wet wt respectively) were at the lower end of the reported range for seals from the North and Baltic Seas. PCB profiles were dominated by congeners 138 and 153, and amongst the D D T group of compounds the pattern of abundance was D D E > D D T >>TDE.
Recent media reports of the deaths of large numbers of common seals (Phoca vitulina) around the northwest coast of Europe, apparently as a result of infection with a previously undescribed virus from the morbilli genus (Osterhaus & Vedder, 1988; Osterhaus et al., 1988; Kennedy et al., 1988; Mahy et al., 1988; Cosby et al., 110
1988), have correlated the severity of the outbreak with pollution in the North Sea. There is strong evidence that the high levels of organochlorines which have been recorded in the blubber of seals in the Dutch Wadden Sea and the Baltic Sea have contributed to the low fertility which has been observed in these areas (Anon., 1988). In the present disease outbreak attention has again focused on organochlorine contaminants, and specifically on PCBs which have been demonstrated to increase the vulnerability of laboratory rats to infection (Wassermann et al., 1979). In order to establish the current levels of organochlorine contaminants in the blubber of seals on the east coast of England, where the disease was first reported in the UK, we have analysed samples from common seals and grey seals (Halichoeru~ grypus) found dead around the Wash and at the Fame Islands (Fig. 1). Methods
Cubes of blubber approximately 2.5 cm on each side were removed from the region of the sternum of 10
Ecology Institute Prizes The Ecology Institute is an international and nonprofit-making organization, with a staff of 36 ecologists-marine, terrestrial and limnetic--all of high international reputation. Neither the director nor any member of the scientific staff receives remuneration. Every year a jury composed of ECI members selects--in a rotating pattern--prize winners among marine, terrestrial or limnetic ecologists. In 1989, prize winners will be selected in the field of marine ecology. ECI strives to 1. further the exchange of information between marine, terrestrial and limnetic ecology; 2. compensate for the lack of balance between analysing and synthesizing research efforts and thus help to provide more feedback and critical overview for ecological sciences; 3. draw the attention of scientists, administrators, politicians and the general public to important issues resulting from ecological research; 4. assist in finding a long-term compromise between the increasingly destructive potential of modern industrial societies and the need for defining and applying measures to protect nature, commensurate with achieving and sustaining the highest possible living standard for man. Taking into account these aims, as well as his or her own field of interest, the winner of the Ecology Institute Prize is requested to author a 200 to 300 printed-page book, to be published by ECI in the
series 'Excellence in Ecology' and to be made available world-wide at cost price. This series' concept is different from that of textbooks. In addition to reviewing a certain field of knowledge, it give the authors a chance to express their personal views on important ecological issues, to interpret current scientific knowledge on the basis of their own experience and insight, and to tell us what, in their opinion, should be done in the future. In contrast, textbooks or handbooks must attempt to cover objectively and comprehensively a certain field of science. The Ecology Institute Prize is endowed with a stipend of USS5000. A second prize may be awarded honouring a young ecologist who has conducted and published uniquely independent, original and/or challenging research efforts representing an important scientific breakthrough: the IRPE PRIZE (International Recognition of Professional Excellence). Selection Procedure Nominations are welcome from all research ecologists. They should reach Prof. Tom Fenchel (Chairman ECI Jury), Marine Biological Laboratou, University of Copenhagen, DK-3000 Helsingor, Denmark, before July 31, 1989. All ecologists engaged in scientific research are eligible. The Jury will select the Prize Winner using the nominations received, as well as their own knowledge of top performers, and their own professional judgement.
11025-326X/89 $3.00+0.00 © 1989 Pergamon Press plc
Marine fOIlution Bulletin, Volume 20, No. 3. pp. 108-110, 1989 Printed in Great Britain.
Viewpoint is a column which allows authors to express their own opinions about current events.
Large Scale Experiments DEREK ELLIS and HJALMAR THIEL Dr Ellis is Professor of Biology in the University of Victoria, B.C., and a member of the Editorial Board of the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Professor Thiel is in charge of the deep-sea benthic programme of the Hydrobiologische Abteilung of the Institut fiir Hydrobioiogie und Fischereiwissenschaft in the University of Hamburg.
There are a number of large scale experiments being proposed for the marine environment, particularly in the context of mining. It is not surprising. We need more information for predicting the environmental consequences of engineered developments in the sea. The issue of large scale experiments as it affects marine mining raises a more general issue for society as 108
a whole. At what stage in our developing engineering capability and knowledge of environmental impact should scientists enlarge the scale of predictive experiments from present small field projects, say, on benthic colonization of artificial substrate boxes to levels which can themselves cause ecosystem changes? There is a need for expansion in scale, as shown by
Volume 20/Number 3/March 1989
various engineering catastrophes of the past decade. When Bhopal blew its storage tank, almost nothing was known of the chemical transformations of methylisocyanate to other dangerous poisons when large volumes were released to air. The radioactive blast at Chernobyl has recently been claimed by Dr. Roger Gale, the US bone-marrow surgeon, as the "last warning" that a larger, or even similar scale, accident could turn into a global crisis. Both the Bhopal and Chernobyl accidents were uncontrolled experiments; forced on the world by insufficient knowledge and care. :,Large scale, controlled, experiments can and should be made to ease decision-making whether particular types of industrial developments should proceed or not. Large scale experiments in the sea come in two types. There are scientist-derived deep sea experiments, large logistically relative to laboratory bench testing. There are also engineered developments, which really are large, as when a mine is started. We tend not to realise that any engineered development is an ecosystem experiment. The ecosystem experiment of starting a mine is almost uncontrolled in a scientific sense, although controlled in the environmental sense (by regulatory agency precautions, and appropriate monitoring). Marine mining developments need treating as experiments with good design of test and control sampling stations to monitor ecosystem changes. But, we also need relevant large-scale scientists' field experiments in the sea. The Pre-Pilot Mining Test 1979 at the Atlantis II Deep in the Red Sea was treated as a scientific experiment and monitored. A joint university-industry team assessed the impact of mud release from the shipboard concentrator. From the results, biologists demanded further impact studies at the next, larger, stage of mining development: the Pilot Mining Operation, still (in 1988) to be implemented. The scientists monitored dispersal of the tailings muds from the dredge-concentrator ship. There was a plume that had not been predicted by two different preliminary models. Only the larger scale of the Pilot Mining Operation still to come will eventually give reliable results on the fate of the plume, its far distant drift or near-distant settlement, and its sediment blanketing effect and community disturbance. Similar pre-pilot mining tests at DOMES manganese nodule sites in the Eastern Pacific have also been monitored and assessed environmentally. Regulatory agencies can now make better informed environmental decisions as a result of these two large scale experiments. There are several other large scale experiments now being proposed, two scheduled to be conducted in 1989. One was described by a team of US Scientists at the 5th Deep Sea Conference in Brest, France, in June 1988. A R U M (Remote Underwater Manipulator) will be deployed in a manganese nodule, potential mining, area initially to backfill 60 cm diameter rings with sediment sufficient to smother at least some of the organisms present. A few weeks later the R U M will be
deployed again to sample test and control (not backfilled) rings. The general hypothesis under test is that massive sediment deposition will smother some infauna, whereas other species will be able to burrow up through the deposits and survive. The experiment will demonstrate which species survive, and how they do so. It is expected that the experiment will eventually be extended to larger rings of several metres and over longer periods, say one year. Coincidentally, the investigators plan to sample still visible dredge tracks some 11 years after the DOMES pre-pilot mining test. This, however, is not experiment; but is opportunistic observational biology--good science, high tech; but still observation, not planned experiment. The combined results of experiment and observation will provide information on biological changes to be expected from nodule mining. A second experiment proposed at the Deep Sea Conference by one of us (HT) is yet larger. It is to harrow or plough a manganese nodule area (leaving the nodules behind) and test the biological consequences of the disturbance. The experimental design calls for 16 m wide tracks arranged in a many spoke star pattern with diameter of 2 nautical miles at 4200 m depth and a repeatedly disturbed centre. The star pattern gives different levels of disturbance related to distance from its central crossing point. Sampling will be within a transpondermarked field by box corer, multiple corer, trawl and baited traps. A camera deep-tow system will record epibenthic organisms and sediment surface structures. As at the DOMES site, the general hypothesis under test is that disturbance of sediment surface and massive redeposition will change the species associations present. Thereby relevant information on the scale and speed of biological loss and recovery can be obtained over many years. The results will influence decisions on eventual nodule mining; e.g. where, by what equipment, and by what dredging pattern. A third experiment may come from a proposed new development in coastal mining. For about 20 years coastal mines have opted to dispose of their waste tailings by submerged pipeline so that on discharge at depth below biological resources, a coherent density current carries on to the deepest point by continuous flow. A proposed molybdenum mine at Quartz Hill, Alaska, has requested permits for such marine discharge to a nearby deep fjord. One of the options is for discharge to a fjord of depth and size such that the tailings could raise the seabed to a level where one can reasonably hypothesize beneficial changes in fjord productivity. The appropriate environmental and mining information is available, in general and site specifically, and the engineering capability is there through the industry. There will be intensive monitoring of the changes; required by US environmental regulations, and continuing the substantial investment in preoperational risk-assessment and monitoring already made by the industry. The results would considerably increase understanding of fjord productivity, ecosystem dynamics and other fjord processes of interest fundamentally, as well as to the coastal mining industry. Yet another large scale experiment will soon be 109
Marine Pollution Bulletin
practical at Island Copper Mine in Canada. The mine is now within about 5 years of its predicted 25 year lifetime. The deep (almost 300 m) pit is only a few metres from the original fjord shoreline. One of the reclamation options is to open up the pit to the fjord so that it becomes a marine ecosystem. Here there might be an opportunity to follow not only ecosystem succession after marine inundation, but such beneficial options as extending the local salmon farm industry into the flooded pit, and managing it for maximum harvests. The point of this article is that our engineering
capability is inevitably leading us towards very large scale, even global, topographic and enviro-chemical changes. It has done so to date faster than our capability for assessment, prediction and prevention of many of the larger catastrophic changes; witness Bhopal and Chernobyl. Observational science can only conduct hindsight assessments, i.e. what happened after the event. Environmental science should be extended to large scale experiments, using not only scientistdesigned tests, but, more important, treating some appropriate industrial developments as controllable experiments in the interests of society.
Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 20. No. 3, pp. 110-115. 1989 Printed in Great Britain.
© Crowncopyright
Concentrations of Organochlorine Compounds in the Blubber of Seals from Eastern and North-eastern England, 1988 ROBIN J. LAW*, COLIN R. ALLCHIN* and JOHN HARWOODt
*Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Directorate of Fisheries Research, Fisheries Laboratory, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex CMO 8HA; t Natural Environment Research Council, Sea Mammal Research Unit, High Cross, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK
Samples of blubber from c o m m o n seals (Phoca vitulina) found dead in eastern England and grey seals (HaHchoerus grypus) found dead on the Farne Islands have been analysed for a range of organochlorine pesticides, individual chiorobiphenyl congeners and total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). N o significant differences were seen between results for the two seal species. HCB and H C H concentrations were low, and total D D T and PCB concentrations (ranging from 0 . 9 9 - 8 . 0 and 5 . 7 33 gg g-t wet wt respectively) were at the lower end of the reported range for seals from the North and Baltic Seas. PCB profiles were dominated by congeners 138 and 153, and amongst the D D T group of compounds the pattern of abundance was D D E > D D T >>TDE.
Recent media reports of the deaths of large numbers of common seals (Phoca vitulina) around the northwest coast of Europe, apparently as a result of infection with a previously undescribed virus from the morbilli genus (Osterhaus & Vedder, 1988; Osterhaus et al., 1988; Kennedy et al., 1988; Mahy et al., 1988; Cosby et al., 110
1988), have correlated the severity of the outbreak with pollution in the North Sea. There is strong evidence that the high levels of organochlorines which have been recorded in the blubber of seals in the Dutch Wadden Sea and the Baltic Sea have contributed to the low fertility which has been observed in these areas (Anon., 1988). In the present disease outbreak attention has again focused on organochlorine contaminants, and specifically on PCBs which have been demonstrated to increase the vulnerability of laboratory rats to infection (Wassermann et al., 1979). In order to establish the current levels of organochlorine contaminants in the blubber of seals on the east coast of England, where the disease was first reported in the UK, we have analysed samples from common seals and grey seals (Halichoeru~ grypus) found dead around the Wash and at the Fame Islands (Fig. 1). Methods
Cubes of blubber approximately 2.5 cm on each side were removed from the region of the sternum of 10