Annual NEMP Report on the Health of the Northeast Coastal Waters of the United States, 1980

NOAA

Results of assessment and monitoring activities by the Northeast Monitoring Program (NEMP) to document the status of health of the living resources and their habitats on the continental shelf off the northeast coast. Includes information about fishery contamination (petroleum hydrocarbons and PCB's), trace metals and organic contaminants in sediments, possible contamination of food fish in shelf water masses at this a dumping site, benthic diversity and standing stocks, concentrations of Acanthamoeba, a human pathogen which flourishes on bacteria and sewage, coastal eutrophication, seabed oxygen demand, flow of contaminants out to the continental shelf in outflow plumes from major estuaries, a higher incidence of skeletal deformities, mutagenic aberrations and various shell or skin lesions in organisms collected inshore and in and around dumpsites, changes in burrowing activities of clams and concomitant changes in feeding activities of predator crabs when challenged by pollutants such as petroleum. Also, several new sources of pollutants to shelf water were identified.