Annual Report and Statement of Program Direction - 1995

9 Mar 1996
UMass/NOAA Cooperative Marine Education and Research Program

New Projects Supported With Base Funding

Base funding for the CMER Program is provided by NOAA through the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). A number of multi-year projects begun during 1989-1993 have ended. As such, most base funds available to the CMER Program in 1995 will be used to begin new projects (Table 4). Priority for supporting new projects with base funds is set by the UMass/NOAA Coordinating Committee, currently composed of the Vice Chancellor for Research for UMass (Frederick W. Byron, Jr.), the Director of The Environmental Institute at UMass (Joseph S. Larson), the Director of Office of Research and Environmental Information of NMFS (Richard B. Roe), and the Science and Research Director of the Northeast Region of NMFS (Allen E. Peterson, Jr.). The CMER Program is administered on campus through The Environmental Institute. The program direction for 1995 includes new studies that are understanding the effect of contaminants on reproduction of winter flounder, compiling sources of information related to habitat use by Hudson River fishes, developing new methods to detect trace metals in phytoplankton, determining the habitat and genetic limits to recovering shortnose sturgeon, and assessing the effects of predation on Atlantic salmon smolts in the Merrimack River.
 

Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals on Winter Flounder (95-09, Year 1 of 2)

J. Newsted, Environmental Sciences Program, UMass-Amherst

To date, the possible reproductive consequences of estrogen functions in wild fish populations that are altered by the presence of contaminants has not been fully investigated. Thus, two major goals of this research are: (1) to evaluate and characterize the relationship between modifying factors such as sex, age, and reproductive status on biomarkers used as measures of endocrine disruption in a control (uncontaminated) population; and (2) to evaluate the relationship between environmental contaminants believed to alter the function of the endocrine systems via the aromatic hydrocarbon (Ah) receptor relative to contaminants that can act directly through the estrogen receptor. The research will be coordinated with the ongoing winter flounder project of NEFSC in Long Island Sound.

 

Introduction of Metals into the Marine Food Web - Analytical Methods Development (95-10, Year 1 of 2)

J. Tyson and P. Uden, Department of Chemistry, UMass-Amherst

The investigators will develop an analytical chemistry methodology that is needed to support a study of the uptake of metals by plankton. The study is a collaboration among scientists at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Rutgers University, and the NEFSC Howard Laboratory. Primary approaches to development of the methodology will consist of flow-based separation methodologies to achieve sampling, concentration, separation, speciation, and full characterization, and will be applied in conjunction with atomic spectrometric quantification and other appropriate methods.

 

Sorting and Identification of Benthic Grab Samples from the Hudson River (95 12, Year 1 of 1)

J. Boreman, Department of Forestry and Wildlife Management, UMass-Amherst

During the summer of 1995 a project was undertaken on the Hudson River to identify areas of concentrations of juvenile shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon. In association with sampling for juvenile sturgeon, benthic grab samples were taken to determine if areas of sturgeon concentration are associated with certain food organisms. The sorting and identification of organisms in the grab samples was not funded by the sponsor of the sturgeon project (The Hudson River Foundation), but the information obtained will be key in testing the hypothesis that the summer distributions of the two sturgeon species is based on food supply.


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CMER
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University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-0820
 Telephone: (413) 545-2842
Fax: (413) 545-2304
E-Mail: jboreman@forwild.umass.edu
URL: http://www.umass.edu/tei/cmer/annual.report.2.html