The Great Lakes - St.Lawrence Research Inventory

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Ohio Water Development Authority, is investigating the presence of pharmaceuticals, health care products, and other organic wastewater compounds entering Tinkers Creek, the largest tributary to the Cuyahoga River. This project has been funded with $2 , over it's duration.

Identified by MOE as early as 1993, the need for effective collection and analysis of surface waters for persistent organic pollutants and emerging organic pollutants at trace levels for monitoring and research purposes continues. However, limitations arising from the on-going use and presence of targeted chemicals in buildings and the laboratory environment, resulting higher detection limits and blank levels, impede the efficient collection and use of data.

The project will be based on the goal of evaluating the spatial variations and temporal trends, and understanding the movement of contaminants primarily in fish of the Great Lakes. The goal will be achieved by statistically analysing the data collected by the SFCMP in conjunction with other complimentary data sets. Other mathematical tools will be subsequently employed as per the requirements.

The watersheds which drain to the central basin on the Canadian shores are heavily developed as agricultural lands and feature multiple small communities. Recreational beaches are distributed over the shoreline. A number of small to moderate size tributaries drain to the shoreline, the discharge from which is likely a key contributor to variability in water quality along the shoreline of the lake. Concurrent with the lake-based studies, detailed information on quality and quantity of water discharging to the shoreline is needed.

Inputs of nutrients (phosphorus, P, and nitrogen, N) to fresh waters can cause excessive aquatic plant growth, depletion of oxygen, and deleterious changes in abundance and diversity of aquatic invertebrates and fish. As part of a ?National Agri-Environmental Standards Initiative?, the Government of Canada committed to development of non-regulatory environmental performance standards that establish nutrient concentrations to protect ecological condition of agricultural streams.

A recently discovered freshwater isolate of the viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) poses a potential health threat to wild Great Lakes fishes. This project plans to develop a new assay that will help detect the presence of the virus in water or tissue samples.

This project has focused on the role of the food chain in the recent documented outbreaks of botulism in waterfowl and fish in the Lower Great Lakes. The results of this collaborative work show that the occurrence of the type E toxin gene can vary widely in terms of presence/absence and also in numbers, indicating a patchy distribution that can differ in space and time. When botulism outbreaks occur, it is likely that most of the bacterial C. botulinum type E production is taking place in certain "hot spots" in the sediment that meet the bacterial requirements for optimal growth.

This project demonstrated that the presence C. botulinum type E will rarely be present in healthy fish from the Lower Great Lakes, but more likely present in moribund and recently dead fish. Birds that feed on moribund and recently dead fish can become intoxicated especially if they feed on fresh water drum.