International Mussel Watch: the initial implementation phase

Volume 24/Number 7/July 1992

Salmon Farms and Shellfish Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is a disease caused by the consumption of marine animals contaminated by certain toxins produced by dinoflagellates. It was first described in Scotland when a number of people were taken ill after eating mussels from Leith dock gates at the beginning of the last century, and has caused repeated bans on the consumption of shellfish from the north-east coast of Britain in recent summers, when it has also begun to spread to the west coast of Scotland, and there has been intermittent speculation whether it may be made worse by marine pollution. Allan Berry of the Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers has now pointed out that this may have some more serious implications. In 1989 an algal bloom was thought to be responsible for the loss of the fish at a salmon farm in the enclosed waters east of Skye. On 11 October that celebrated gadfly the West Highland Free Press reported that 250 000 salmon weighing 300 t and worth £2 million had died from unknown causes at two more farms in this area. Investigations by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (DAFS) failed to detect any of the usual diseases, but toxins of the type responsible for PSP were found in the fish gills, and it was thought that although it was late in the season another algal bloom might be responsible. Despite local

International Mussel Watch: the initial implementation phase As a consequence of increasing population and intensifying industrial development on a global scale, the world's coastal waters will continue to receive societal waste. The goals of the International Mussel Watch Project are to assess the extent and severity of contamination of the coastal waters of the world with respect to selected chemicals, and to develop an international infrastructure of cooperating scientists and laboratories for research and monitoring of contaminants in coastal waters worldwide in the future. The International Oceanographic Commission of iSNESCO (IOC), in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are jointly funding the International Mussel Watch Program and have initiated a monitoring programme in Central and South America in 1991-92. The programme is being directed by the International Mussel Watch Committee (Table 1) and administered by the Project Secretariat office based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, 02543, USA.

misgivings the Scottish Office issued a special licence for the dead fish to be dumped at sea 70 miles west of the Hebrides. Two months later, in early December, European Commission veterinarians in Belgium suddenly imposed a ban on the sale of Scottish shellfish to other member states because they were found to be contaminated with PSP, which normally only occurs in the spring and summer. While this has now been restricted to Orkney scallops, which may retain toxin for up to two years, so that they could have become contaminated during past summer outbreaks, there appears to have been little discussion whether alternatively they might also have been affected by an outbreak due to dumping infected material at sea in an area where the prevailing current would then take it to Orkney. Thus, in addition to the steady increase in all the other restrictions on our other fisheries, which now involve laying up the vessels for a large part of the year, it would appear that we are now also confronted with two new problems involving both the salmon farms and shellfisheries. In view of the apparent official complacency over this issue perhaps it is time that DAFS started to test the Scottish Office regularly for PSP as well? W. R. P. BOURNE

Department of Zoology, Universityof Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

TABLE 1 Members of the International Mussel Watch Committee. Members

Edward D. Goldberg, Chairman Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA John W. Farrington, Vice Chairman Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA Roger Dawson Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, USA Arne B. Jernelov Water & Air Pollution Research Laboratory, Sweden Laurence D. Mee International Atomic Energy Agency, Monaco Eric Schneider National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA

Ex Officio Bruce W. Tripp, Executive Officer CRC/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA Jos6 Sericano, Field Scientific Officer GERG/Texas A&M University, USA Anthony H. Knap, UNESCO-GEMSI Liaison Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Bermuda

The need for an International Mussel Watch project was recognized in 1975, when Professor Edward Goldberg in his Marine Pollution Bulletin editorial, called for a global marine monitoring programme to serve as a 371

Marine Pollution Bulletin

"springboard for action'. He outlined a fiscally reasonable, global scale monitoring programme based on the sentinel organisms concept. This monitoring programme must be capable of detecting spatial and temporal trends in concentrations of several important chemical contaminants. Since the late 1960s, scientists have been using bivalve filter-feeding molluscs to monitor for selected chemical contaminants in coastal marine waters and an extensive 'mussel watch' literature has developed from that work. Such contamination of coastal waters might result in changes that are deleterious, over the long term, to both the integrity of the coastal environment and to human health. Because of their sedentary habits and their ability to bioconcentrate the pollutants of interest, mussels and other bivalve species appear to be appropriate sentinel organisms even considering complexities such as age, season, organism health and interspecies differences. The mussel watch approach has been adopted as one of several coastal environmental quality monitoring strategies by several national programmes and by UN programmes. The International Mussel Watch Project will build on this cumulative experience. A world-wide literature search has recently been completed by the US NOAA Status and Trends Program and is available as a special report. Particularly important among the monitoring programmes that were established during the 1970s were those of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The United Nations Environment Program has also created its Regional Seas Program which has placed a major emphasis on the development of host country capabilities for measuring the levels of contaminants in coastal and marine environments. The IOC sponsored the formation of a Task Team on Marine Pollution Research and Monitoring in the West Pacific region. National governments in many countries have initiated their own coastal monitoring programmes to provide technical information that can be used to protect coastal resources from the deleterious effects of chemical contamination. In the United States, the 'Mussel Watch' Program was begun by the US EPA in the mid 1970s and involved academic scientists from several academic research institutions. This programme used mussels and oysters as indicators of the local levels of four classes of pollutants in US coastal waters, including synthetic organics, fossil fuel compounds and their derivatives, several metals, and the transuranic radioactive elements produced in the nuclear fuel cycle and by fallout from nuclear weapons tests. Mussel Watch became an operational contaminant monitoring programme in the United States in 1986 and is presently directed by US NOAA as a component of the Status and Trends Program. In a 1978 workshop in Barcelona, the members of the US Mussel Watch Program joined with scientists of other countries to assess the methodologies employed for the detection and measurement of pollutants in coastal zones through the sentinel organism approach. The participants at the Barcelona workshop decided that continuing international collaboration and communication would be worthwhile, and elected a committee charged with the task of planning for a future 372

meeting. Communication at the international level was continued at a second meeting held in Hawaii in November of 1983. Participants at the Hawaii meeting examined the conceptual approaches used by the Mussel Watch programmes and assessed the potential for expansion of this approach to a global scale and especially to the southern hemisphere. The need for the International Mussel Watch Project was reaffirmed at the Hawaii meeting. Planning momentum was maintained by the International Mussel Watch Committee during the next few years. The International Mussel Watch Project is being implemented initially in the Central-South America and Caribbean region and will focus on organochlorine biocide contaminants and PCBs (Table 2). Plans are TABLE 2

Chlorinated hydrocarbons to be analysed in collected tissue samples. We envisage that about 70-80 sites will be sampled for indigenous bivalves and tissue samples will be analysed for a variety of chlorinated pesticides and selected chlorinated biphenyls: Aldrin Heptachlor Endrin Heptachlor epoxide Dieldrin Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) Chlordanes ¢~-Hexachlorocyclohexane (~x-HCH) 18-Hexachlorocyclohexane ([]-HCH) o,p'-DDD Lindane ('I-HCH) p,p'-DDD Trans-nonachlor o,p'-DDE Methoxychlor p,p'-DDE o,p'-DDT p,p'-DDT NOTES: Mirex and Kelthane may be added to the suite of contaminants analysed if funding for analysis becomes available. A common set of individual chlorobiphenyls (PCBs} will be chosen for analysis following the assessment of the results of the first round of intercalibration exercises of IOC/ICES/JMG. Total PCBs will be estimated from these data.

being made to expand the programme to other contaminants and to other regions so that all countries that wish to participate, may do so. We invite anyone interested in participating in subsequent phases of International Mussel Watch to contact the Project Secretariat in Woods Hole. Currently available funding does not permit a global-scale programme or a Western Hemisphere program that includes all types of chemical contaminants. This initial implementation phase will focus on organochlorine biocides because of their continued used in agricultural and public health applications in several tropical and sub-tropical areas and because we know very little about production and use or about the resulting coastal contamination. The experienced gained from this initial phase will be useful in implementing an expansion of the programme. In May, 1991 members of the International Mussel Watch Committee and representatives of three regional monitoring programmes met at the University of Costa Rica to finalize the initial implementation phase of International Mussel Watch. At that meeting, sampling sites and participating national scientists were selected. The Project Secretariat coordinates the work of two central analytical facilities. International Laboratory for Marine Radioactivity (ILMR) in Monaco and Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG) at Texas

Volume 24/Number 7/July 1992

A&M University, will analyse the collected samples for organochlorine contaminants. Tissue samples and extracts will be archived for later analysis of other contaminants if funding is available. ILMR will also supervise the Field Scientist responsible for sample collection. The International Mussel Watch Project will complement regional monitoring programmes where they are established, thus linking the existing programmes and increasing their effectiveness. These existing regional programmes provide a base on which to build an international programme and their support and collaboration is critical to the success of the international programme. In the initial implementation phase, samples will be collected throughout the region with the assistance of host-country scientists. These scientists will form the nucleus of an internationaI marine monitoring network through which the results of the project will be disseminated. Host-country scientists and IMW sampling sites will be coordinated by the Woods Hole-based Project Secretariat, working with the Field Scientific Officer. All sampling and sample logistics will be supervised by the Field Scientific Officer and the host-country scientists will work directly with him. The field sampling is currently underway, and collection have already been completed in much of Central America and South America. The Project Secretariat and the Field Scientific Officer will provide technical support to hostcountry scientists as resources permit. The International Mussel Watch Committee, in concert with the Project Secretariat, the Field Scientific Officer, and the contract laboratories will provide data interpretation, taking into account comments from host-country scientists. An international meeting, involving participating host-

country scientists is being organized for early 1993. For those scientists with analytical expertise, tissue samples will be available for in-country analysis and interlaboratory comparison. Host-country scientists will be asked to assemble production and use data as well, from available sources in their respective countries. This initial implementation phase will: 1. generate high quality data on chlorinated pesticides and estimate PCB concentrations in the Central-South AmericaCaribbean coastal region, 2. serve as a 'field-test' of a large-scale international marine monitoring programme for chemical contaminants, 3. create an international network of coastal environmental scientists, 4. provide a forum for training and for discussion of analytical results, and 5. create the institutional structure for a global scale coastal monitoring programme. Continuation (and expansion) of this project will be considered when the programme is assessed at the conclusion of the initial implementation phase. Hostcountries and the entire UN family will benefit from the scientific results generated during this initial phase and will have an opportunity to expand local monitoring activities with technical support from the Project as well as to integrate these activities into regional and globalscale programmes. BRUCE W. TRIPP Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA. JOHN W. FARRINGTON Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA. EDWARD D. GOLDBERG Scripps Institution of Oceanography, LaJolla, CA 92093, USA. JOSE SERICANO International Laboratory for Marine Radioactivity, Monaco.

Compact Inshore Datalogger with Satellite Positioning The latest option for the Andrews Hydrographics NAVBOX system will enable water industry and harbour surveyors to integrate bathymetric, environmental and other survey data with GPS positioning. The compact NAVBOX, a complete system just 480 mmX355 mmX500 mm, has been designed for use from small, perhaps open, launches during river, harbour and coastal surveys. Data can be logged and charged on-board the launch. IMB-based, the data can be further processed on most office PC's. Andrews provide specially formatted data discs for particular mathematical models. Eight of the new NAVBOX's are now in use; several with major worldwide organizations including the

Andrews Hydrographics NAVBOX System

United Nations, a Middle East Port Authority, an Italian research institute and Hydraulics Research Limited in Wallingford. Andrews have adopted 373