POLLUTANTS

Sources;

Environmental protection agency → created due to some river in Ohio (can´t understand its name) that
used to routinely catch fire because it was so polluted. Primarily due to pint source pollution of factories
that let their waste through pipes to the river.

Nonpoint source carries fertilizers and pesticides off cropland, animal waste, leaky septic system and
even deforestation allows sediment to come into the water and block out sunlight (damage gills of
animals), boat traffic (stirs up the nonpoint sources and reintroducing into the water over & over again).

CLEAN WATER ACT: passed in 1972 in the US is the most comprehensive piece of legislation that
addresses water quality and pollution across the fresh and marine environments.

 Why? Try to clean water ways.

 Focus: point source pollution, the nonpoint is the problem nowadays. The act doesn't have the
legal “teeth” to deal with it unless we can show where the pollution is coming from → therefore
the act isn´t working anymore, you see a whole lot of pollution in the water and then next to it
you have a boat yard, the road, all kinds of potential sources.

WHAT IS A POLLUTANT:

Dolphins in southern part of the Indian river lagoon have flesh eating fungal infection due to the
mercury in their diet. It comes from air pollution, Florida is a coal burning state, mercury sets on the
land and because of the canals it gets out into a big body of water. Fertilizers that have sulfur in them
contributes to the cycle of the mercury getting to dolphins and presumably is getting into our food chain
as well.

Some pollutants last short times, like herbicides but others persist for very long time like heavy metals
as mercury.

Some of them break out very quickly or are broken by microorganisms while others stay around for long
times like mercury or DDT (or by-products, despite the fact that it has been banned for many decades).

 Temperature pollution: impacts of global climate change. Possible impact on the global
thermohaline (temperature – salt) circulation pattern → has to do with density of waters and
currents of flow into our oceans, there is this conveyor belt that is passing through our oceans
that contributes to the stability of climate on the planet. If the belt gets stopped cause we
changed the pattern of the flow then the stability that has allowed agriculture to thrive on this
planet will go away (life will become very different).
 Sound pollution: marine mammals are very subjected to. Boat traffic interferes with
communication patterns.
 Light pollution: can interfere with how some animals use their lights, interfere with fish
spooning (some like to do so in very dark spaces).
 Plastic pollution: some turtles mistake plastic bags for a jellyfish and try to eat it clogging up
their systems and die.
The dolphins exposed to mercury have some after effects like the metal has depressed their immune
system making them more susceptible to other pathogens in the waters. We are creating an
environment where pathogens are thriving.

Plastics break down into micro-plastics → they glom onto the pollutants and gets incorporated into the
food chain. It happens in shore lands and into oceans that have currents that accumulate micro –
plastics and make them a part of the ecosystem.

Balance of ions and a buffering capacity that makes this system possible → we have similar chemistry in
our body as sea water (logical as we came from the ocean). We are changing its chemical composition
by the burning of fossil fuel therefore acidification of the ocean.

Salinity → we talk about it in parts per thousand. If you take 1L bottle (1.000ml) and boil it down, we are
going to find 25 grams of salt because we are in an outgoing tide; on an ingoing tide (you are getting
ocean water coming in) you will find about 35 grams of salt.

 This isn't table salt, it isn´t just sodium – chloride. There are six critical elements in it and a lot of
micronutrients → this makes life possible.
  Usually is nitrogen that is in limited supply.
 In fresh water tends to be phosphorus (not always the case).

Out in the open ocean there are very few nutrients and the water is called oligotrophic to in shore were
there are a lot of nutrients that support plant life and growth → eutrophication

 At certain levels eutrophication can be a good thing because its supporting building life
 In excess algae takes over the ecosystem and blocks out sunlight and the good plants like
seagrass meadows aren´t getting sunlight that they need to photosynthesize.

They are special due to the nutrients they provide, their hiding places; a lot of open ocean fish come
here to spawn so their larvae and juveniles can hide.
Mangroves can live with their feet in salt water that provides great hiding places. Sea grass meadows
also → there´s a loop where we have too many nutrients coming in and its turning the water green not
letting any sunlight making it impossible for sea grass to get sunlight that they need to live → they´ll die.
You start to have this harmful algae blooms that are being produced by the increased nutrients.
Seagrass and drift algae and submerged aquatic vegetation are all sponges for nutrients so when they
die then the nutrient level goes up and you are more likely to get a harmful algae bloom.

 Tipping point: due to all of the stress by humans living too close to it and dumping all of their
pollution into it.
 Estuary are very special places, 70% of earth are covered with water, while estuary's are 1% of
the are and yet they play a huge role in healt of oceans. They provide nutrients, blocks of life.
 Problem is we are adding a lot of nutrients from our agriculture, fertilizers, etc. Those nutrients
cause an increase in eutrophication in this once healthy ecosystem. For example, turning the
lagoon green causing the block of sunlight.
 3 of the most productive ecosystems in the world are: coral reefs, rain forest and sea grass
meadows.

Another consequence of nonpoint source pollution is the dissolved organic matter. When fresh water
meets salt water the dissolved organic matter precipitates in flocculation → creates a mutt that ends up
on the bottom of the estuary. What was once a sandy bottom is now a black goo that is very unhealthy
for the bottom living organisms.

We knocked the balance of the estuary, we are just beginning to understand the microbial population
and how they help break up nutrients and recycle them and we throw it out of balance. So we try to fix
it to its previous state but the problem is we don´t really know how it was before.
It´s not an unnatural process, but they are occurring at an accelerated pace due to the anthropogenic
nutrient rise in the waters.
Some of the red tide dinoflagellates are also bioluminescent, so the water turns red during the day and
brilliant blue at night. It can be beautiful and toxic as the same time.

Some dinoflagellates are symbionts in corals, some create red tide, some are bioluminescent, etc. They
have an amazing quantity of DNA for reasons we yet do no understand.

One of the more extreme effects;

After the algae blooms die, they are consumed by bacteria that also consume all the O2 of the waters.
One at the base of the Mississippi river for example.
Nutrients are a big part of the problem, but there are also other pollutants. So many we hardly even
know what to test for.

For example, in Europe they are not allowed to release a toxicant into their environment until proven
innocent. In other parts of the world there are a lot of toxicants being released into the environment
without any studies as to if they are toxic, polluting, or which effect they have on the ecosystem.

FIELD WORK
Sometimes the best way to test for pollution is to test the water sediments because most of it resides in
them. We look for toxins and nutrients.

Some of the algae produce toxins that gets in the air, nobody wants to live near swamps (affecting
property values and tourism).

Nonpoint source pollution: fertilizer, pesticides running off cropland, animal waste running off feed lots,
sediments from deforested areas, leaking septic system, toxic cocktails of hydrocarbons from our
parking lots every time there is a storm runoff.

There are so many toxins → too much money and time to test them all. They use bioluminescent
bacteria (analogy to canaries used in the mines, they were more sensible to toxins in the air so if they
stopped singing it meant it was dangerous), the light put out by the bacteria is linked to the respiratory
chain of the bacteria, anything that interferes with the light output means that there are toxins in there.

Once when they are able to find the hot spots for the toxins, they can take samples from there and send
them to the lab for a much deeper analysis → saves times and money.

 Gradient of toxicity → they test the bacteria with different amount of water. If it takes little, it
means there is great deal of toxins in it.

If the stake holder become involved in the analysis of the water it might have a bigger effect than if the
scientist analyses it and then publishes a paper that is put in a shelf somewhere. Policies often made
under short timelines, lot of controversy are usually slow rate.

 50% of our O2 comes from the oceans. Essentially everyone is a stakeholder, we need ocean to
sustain life. We need for people to become more invested in our ecosystem, to learn when
there is something wrong / right, get involved into how to keep the healthy, etc.
 Key: to make pollution visible, if people knew the impact and negative consequences they will
be more likely to take action.
 Fast ways to asses the health of an ecosystem → researching possible techniques.

If you take one sample, it might lead to error. If you sample for example 5 different areas within the
water area, you have a more statistically significative sample.
Mapping of the toxicity and sediment using bioluminescence as an indicator of where the toxins reside
(not what they are) so we can be more cost effective and pick the most toxic samples to send to labs.

 Kilroy: monitoring device thar measures flow speed and direction (another range of things) so
that gives you the context as to where pollutants are coming from.