Ethan Baruh

Effect of Water Pollutants on Non-Marine Life in Estuaries

The water pollution throughout San Diego has a very detrimental effect on the land

animals of the area, but there are ways we can help stop this pollution. Pollution takes many

forms, and can affect life in many different ways but there also a lot of ways to solve this

problem.

If you have ever been near the San Diego river after a rainy day, you most likely know

that it is not the cleanest river. Driving down the I-8 freeway just after a rain, you can smell the

sewage from your car, and see trash floating through the river and draining into the pacific

ocean. As you may imagine this is not the most ideal scenario for most species in the

surrounding ecosystem. The San Diego River, and more specifically the river mouth, is an

estuary ecosystem that supports countless species. The river is home to over 400 bird species, 15

mammal species, 77 reptile species, and countless plant species (Isler 4)1. All of these species

are affected by the pollution of the river in some way or another. One very affected family of

animals are birds.

Birds are some of the most affected types of animals when it comes to water pollution.

There are many ways that pollution can affect birds that live in or near water, but one dangerous

way is through the disruption of the endocrine system (Tanabe 1)2. The endocrine system is a

very important system in many organisms that controls the hormones of the body. In humans,

for example, the endocrine system is responsible for many things such as managing metabolism,

1
Isler, Marly N. ​A Brief Walk Along the San Diego River​.
2
​ anabe, Shinsuke. "Contamination and toxic effects of persistent endocrine disrupters in marine mammals and
T
birds." ​Marine pollution bulletin​ 45.1-12 (2002): 69-77
sleep, mood and more (Zimmermann 1)3. There are many types of hormone disrupters but some

of the prominent ones are organochlorine insecticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, and organotins

(Tanabe 1)​2​. When birds, and also mammals, go into polluted water they can pick up these

chemicals which can then wreak havoc on their bodies and ruin homeostasis which is often times

deadly. Non marine animals can also get these issues through eating marine animals. Take fish

eating birds for example. A fish that lives in a heavily polluted river, like the San Diego River,

has high concentrations of these chemicals in its body, so when that fish is then eaten by a bird,

the bird absorbs those chemicals. The bird then eats more fish and gets higher levels of those

chemicals and even more problems arise when that bird is eaten by another animal. This final

animal that is at the top of the trophic pyramid will then have the highest levels of the disruption

chemicals due to a process called biological magnification (Clark et al. 1472)4. This causes

tertiary consumers, which are often some of the most important animals to an ecosystem, to

accumulate very high levels of dangerous substances, such as these endocrine disrupters.

Just besides water pollution there are many forms of pollution that can affect river

ecosystems. Many people actually dump trash in estuaries because there is a misconception that

they are self cleaning. When people put trash into the estuary it creates even more pollution

which can sometimes become caught by currents or by plants in the water and stay and end up

being eaten by a fish in the river. Another issue in estuaries is the conversion to agricultural

3
“Endocrine System: Facts, Functions and Diseases.” ​LiveScience​, Purch,
www.livescience.com/26496-endocrine-system.html.

4
Clark, Mary. ​Biology 2e.​ OpenStax.
land. One study predicted that 38% of coastal wetlands had been converted to be used as

multiple things such as agricultural land, or to create ports (“Eastuaries” n.d.)5

While the problem of river pollution may seem daunting and like there are no solutions,

fortunately there are some. There are many things that just individuals can do to help reduce the

pollution of water in our cities, the Environmental Protection Agency has a program called the

National Estuary Program(NEP) that was created specifically to help preserve the country’s

estuaries. Some of these things include preserving water at home, mainting vehicles so they

don’t get oil or gas leaks, staying out of sensitive and protected estuary areas, and helping

volunteer to pick up trash at local estuaries (“​What You Can Do to Help Protect Our Coastal

Watersheds and Estuaries​”, n.d.)6. These are all very good ideas, but some problems need to

faced on a larger scale which is another thing the NEP does. One big project the NEP currently

has is its Morro Bay NEP (“​How the National Estuary Programs Address Environmental Issues​”

n.d.)7. Morro Bay is an estuary in California that is filling up with sediment much faster than

normal. If this continues unchecked then the estuary could lose almost all of its habitat within

400 years. This sounds like a very long time but on a geological scale it is almost nothing. If

this happened countless species would lose their habitats. If you take the numbers from the San

Diego River Estuary then that would mean over 500 species displaced due to the estuary filling

5
US Department of Commerce, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Estuaries.” ​NOAA's
National Ocean Service Education,​ 19 Dec. 2004,
oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/estuaries/estuaries09_humandisturb.html.

6
“What You Can Do to Help Protect Our Coastal Watersheds and Estuaries.” ​EPA,​ Environmental Protection
Agency, 29 Oct. 2019, www.epa.gov/nep/what-you-can-do-help-protect-our-coastal-watersheds-and-estuaries.

7
“How the National Estuary Programs Address Environmental Issues.” ​EPA​, Environmental Protection Agency, 13
Sept. 2019, www.epa.gov/nep/how-national-estuary-programs-address-environmental-issues.
with sediment. The NEP is trying to solve this crisis by teaching ranch owners about ways to

improve their farm systems to help reduce the erosion and also developing fire management

plans so that sediment from areas burnt down by fires don’t erode the estuary (“​How the

National Estuary Programs Address Environmental Issues​” n.d.)​7​.

Together all of these ideas are helping to solve the issue of river and estuary pollution. It

is a long fight but one that is winnable if people take action now. Estuaries and rivers are home

to countless species and are some of the most biodiverse areas in cities and the loss of these

natural places would be catastrophic to the ecosystem and all the species that live there.