Baby Fish in Polluted San Francisco Estuary Waters Are Stunted and

Press Release - UC Davis
12/8/08

Baby Fish in Polluted San Francisco Estuary Waters Are Stunted and
Deformed

Striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated before birth
with a toxic mix of pesticides, industrial chemicals and flame
retardants that their mothers acquire from estuary waters and food
sources and pass on to their eggs, say UC Davis researchers.

Using new analytical techniques, the researchers found that offspring of
estuary fish had underdeveloped brains, inadequate energy supplies and
dysfunctional livers. They grew slower and were smaller than offspring
of hatchery fish raised in clean water.

"This is one of the first studies examining the effects of real-world
contaminant mixtures on growth and development in wildlife," said study
lead author David Ostrach, a research scientist at the UC Davis Center
for Watershed Sciences. He said the findings have implications far
beyond fish, because the estuary is the water source for two-thirds of
the people and most of the farms in California .

"If the fish living in this water are not healthy and are passing on
contaminants to their young, what is happening to the people who use the
water, are exposed to the same chemicals or eat the fish?" Ostrach said.

"We should be asking hard questions about the nature and source of these
contaminants, as well as acting to stop the ongoing pollution and
mitigate these current problems."

The new study, published online Nov. 24 by the journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, is one of a series of reports by
Ostrach and UC Davis colleagues on investigations they began in 1988.
Their goal is to better understand the reasons for plummeting fish
populations in the estuary, an enormous California region that includes
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay .

The estuary is one of the world's most important water supplies for
urban use and agriculture, and is also one of the most contaminated
aquatic ecosystems.

The ominous decline in estuary populations of striped bass, delta smelt,
longfin smelt and threadfin shad, named the "pelagic organism decline,"
or POD, by the region's environmental scientists, was first reported at
the turn of the century and has continued to worsen through 2007.

Ostrach's lab at UC Davis is part of the multi-agency POD research team
and charged with understanding contaminant effects and other
environmental stressors on the entire life cycle of striped bass.

Studies of striped bass are useful because, first, they are a key
indicator of San Francisco Estuary ecosystem health and, second, because
contaminant levels and effects in the fish could predict the same in
people. For example, one of the contaminants found in the fish in this
study, PDBEs, have been found in Bay Area women's breast milk at levels
100 times those measured in women elsewhere in the world.

The new study details how Ostrach and his team caught gravid female
striped bass in the Upper Sacramento River , then compared the river
fishes' eggs and hatchlings (larvae) to offspring of identical but
uncontaminated fish raised in a hatchery.

In the river-caught fishes' offspring, the UC Davis researchers found
harmful amounts of PBDEs, PCBs and 16 pesticides.

PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are widely used flame retardants;
PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are chemicals once used in making a
range of products, from paper goods to electric transformers; and the
pesticides detected include some currently widely used in agriculture,
such as chlorpyrifos and dieldren, and others banned decades ago, such
as DDT.

These compounds are known to cause myriad problems in both young and
adult organisms, including skeletal and organ deformities and
dysfunction; changes in hormone function (endocrine disruption); and
changes in behavior. Some of the effects are permanent. Furthermore,
Ostrach said, when the compounds are combined, the effects can be
increased by several orders of magnitude.

Ostrach's co-authors Janine Low-Marchelli and Shaleah Whiteman are
former UC Davis undergraduate students. Co-author Kai Eder was Ostrach's
postdoctoral scholar in Joseph Zinkl's laboratory in the UC Davis School
of Veterinary Medicine.

Since 1988, the Ostrach laboratory has received more than $1.5 million
in funding from agencies working on Bay-Delta ecosystem problems and
expects to conduct an additional $1.5 million worth of studies in the
next few years. Key funders include the UC Davis School of Veterinary
Medicine, California 's Department of Water Resources, State Water
Resources Control Board and Department of Fish and Game, San Francisco
Estuary Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.#

http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8887

I think this should have been titled: "Food may grow where water flows, but fish don't"

I know Dave Ostrach personally.  I like the title I will pass it on.

Jim