i
&EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Water
(WH-556F)
EPA 503/4-90-004
September 1990
The Great Lakes Fish
Monitoring Program
A Technical And Scientific Model
For Interstate Environmental
Monitoring
Ontario
Illinois
Pennsylvania
SKST^iJjIS't'jrST :Vt; ^(Vi,,;*".^
Summary
;The Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program is designed to
^support decisions on potential human exposure to pol-
lutants andlo provide indicators of the health of the Great
jLakes ecosystem. The program monitors the presence
Sf toxic contaminants in fish. Species are selected to
^represent a range of ages, locations, geographic disper-
jsa'l, and sensitivity to pollutants. The sampling and
fanalysis are conducted by numerous state and federal
.agencies coordinated by the Great Lakes National Pro-
gram Office, and results are peer-reviewed, reported to
^public authorities, and published in scientific journals.
f. The Fish Monitoring Program is a flexible, low-cost
pway to monitor water quality. Other programs are adopt-
ing it as a model to monitor key environmental variables
| in coastal, estuarine, and riverine areas. Using the
'"I
standardized sampling and analysis techniques devel-
oped by the Fish Monitoring Program, states have im-
proved the reliability and comparability of their internal
data, raising public confidence in the results and promoting
uniform and consistent Health advisories.
The Great. Lakes Fisjh Monitoring Program incorpo-
rates monitoring techniques of special interest to Techni-
cal Advisory Committeesi, health officials, and estuarine
programs facing problems of baseline characterization
or long-term monitoring strategies for measuring envi-
ronmental results. Several states involved in regional
marine or aquatic assessment programs have adapted'
the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program's techniques
to their own needs. i
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Introduction
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between
Canada and the United States (signed in 1972, amended
In 1978 and 1987), places first priority on the design and
implementation of a plan to restore the Great Lakes
ecosystem. The other side of the restoration coin,
however, is the need to protect current and future users
from the effects of the degraded conditions of the Lakes.
In the Great Lakes, this public health function is carried
out first by the health departments of the affected states,
and second, by the International Joint Commission,
which was established in 1912 to address contamination
by both the United States and Canada. Both planning
and public health functions require documentation of
pollution in the Great Lakes ecosystem. A common
method of collecting such information is to measure
pollutants found in fish, which accumulate toxins by virtue
of theirgeographic mobility and their position nearthe top
of the food chain. Although these data provide valuable
information to the planner, the public health need is more
visible. It is, after all, the public health advisory which will
tell people to stop eating fish and which will determine the
viability of current or future commercial fisheries.
The Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program provides
trend data on toxic compounds in fish; it also provides
specific information on the potential for human exposure
to toxins in commonly eaten species. As a planning and
assessment tool, it measures the overall success of
bans, restrictions and other remedial actions to control
lake pollution. It also provides information on new toxic
compounds entering the lakes' ecosystem. These objec-
tives are accomplished by a systematic program of
harvesting and analyzing fish to ascertain the level of
toxic pollutants in fish tissue. This has been a formal
function of the Great Lakes National Program Office
(GLNPO) since 1978.
This fact sheet by the U.S. EPA Office of Marine and
Estuarine Protection and the Great Lakes National Pro-
gram Office describes the conceptual, organizational,
and managerial processes of the Great Lakes Fish
Monitoring Program. Other fact sheets in this series
describe the overall management framework for the
Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the or-
ganization of the Green Bay Mass Balance Study. An
earlier fact sheet covers the Great Lakes phosphorus
strategy.
Evolution of Great Lakes Fish
Monitoring Programs
Fish contaminant monitoring began in the Great Lakes in
the mid-1960s, when the Great Lakes Fishery Labora-
tory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a
program to measure the contamination of lake trout. This
program continues today under the joint sponsorship of
the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and GLNPO and
provides annual data on the contamination of lake trout
by DDT, dieldrin, PCBs (starting in 1972), and chlordane
(since 1977). Over the years, the number of lakes,
sampling locations, species, and contaminants have
been expanded to the point where the most recent
agreement between the Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Great Lakes National Program Office (August, 1989)
specifies the collection of 50 lake trout (or walleye, where
there are no lake trout) and50 smelt, from each of eleven
locations two in each of the Great Lakes, and one in
Lake St. Clair every other autumn. The samples are
analyzed for PCBs, DDT complex, dieldrin, chlordane,
toxaphene, and mirex (Lake Ontario only). The list of
contaminants being monitored continues to increase as
scientific knowledge of the effects of these chemicals
increases, and as they are observed in the environment.
The twenty-year progression of the lake trout moni-
toring program from an informal arrangement between
EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service to its role as a key
measure of the effect of the Great Lakes Water Quality
Agreement mirrors the gradual evolution of national
support for a comprehensive water quality management
program in the Great Lakes basin. There are now four
elements to the fish monitoring program, each with
different collection requirements.
There are no formal mechanisms for changing the
procedures of the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program,
but it has demonstrated a capacity to adapt to new
conditions. Pressure for change comes from two sources:
(1) changes in the policy recommendations of the Inter-
national Joint Commission; and (2) changes in technol-
ogy. These issues are raised in annual meetings to
discuss fish monitoring issues, and in the course of peer
reviews of scientific studies based on the analysis and
reporting of findings from the monitoring program.
Changes in procedures are generally endorsed and
adopted by GLNPO when consensus exists that such
changes are both congruent with the goals of the Great
Printed on Recycled Paper
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Participants in the tumor monitoring program include
the Great'Lakes Fishery Laboratory, the Great Lakes
National Program Office, the National Cancer Institute,
and the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission.
The Management Program
The Fish Monitoring Program is a flexible, relatively low-
cost way to monitor water quality. Using the standard-
ized sampling and analysis techniques developed by the
Fish Monitoring Program, states have improved the
reliability and comparability of their internal data, raised
public confidence in the results, and promoted uniform
and consistent health advisories. Standardized monitor-
ing methods also help to produce commonly accepted
measures of objectives and program performance for
state and local groups participating in the Great Lakes
Water Quality Agreement.
The success of the program is based on four elements:
the overall structure and organization of the Great
Lakes National Program Office, including its com-
munication network and working relationships with
the eight states involved;
the benefits the states perceive in cooperation, in-
cluding especially access to a database of geo-
graphically and historically dispersed information on
pollution trends;
a core staff who have worked with the program for a
long time; and
the application of sound scientific procedures to
critical public policy questions.
Interstate programs similar to the Fish Monitoring
Program are being adapted from the Great Lakes model
by the states bordering the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
In addition, New York State is leading an effort to stan-
dardize fish contamination monitoring protocols on the
Atlantic Coast.
A large number of people are involved in the Great
Lakes Fish Monitoring Program because the institutional
pattern of involvement is now so broadly based. (See
box.) Supervision and coordination of the program is
accomplished by aseniorscientist and two administrative
staff. Other direct costs of the program to the Great
Lakes National Program Office include approximately
$200,000 worth of contractor support for collection and
processing of samples. Additional time and laboratory
support is contributed to the program by the various
federal and state participants.
Fish Monitoring Program Participants
U.S. EPA Great Lakes ^National Program Office;
U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife
Service, National Fisheries Research Center
Great Lakes; i
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
National Institutes of Health,
National Cancer Institute;
The Smithsonian Institution;
U.S. Food and Drug Administration-
Illinois Department of Conservation;
Illinois Department of Public Health;
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency;
Indiana Department of (Environmental Management
Indiana Department of Natural Resources;
Indiana State Board of Health;
Michigan Department of Agriculture;
Michigan Department of Natural Resources;
Michigan Department of Public Health;
Minnesota Department of Agriculture;
Minnesota Department of Health;
Minnesota Department pf Natural Resources;
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency;
New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation; |
New York State Department of Health;
Ohio Department of Natural Resources
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Resources; '
Pennsylvania Department of Health;
Pennsylvania Fish Commission;
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and
Consumer Protection;
Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services;
Wisconsin Department of- Natural Resources
Lessons Learned
The Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program, a leader in
the collection and use of long-term environmental moni-
toring data, offers numerous advantages to its partici-
pants:
Its results, based on peer-reviewed scientific stud-
ies, are the most accurate that modern technology
can achieve;
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(1) To highlight the introduction of "new" pollutants (i.e.,
not previously observed) into the lakes' ecosystem
before they affect an entire lake, and
(2) To identify source areas of compounds already
causing pollution problems in a lake.
A second element of this project provides for the
annual collection of young shiners (i.e., current-year
hatchlings) to provide short-term trend data on the effects
of remediation efforts at specific sites.
States collect the samples for this project, and the
Great Lakes National Program Office provides the analy-
sis and publishes the results.
3. Game Fish Fillet Monitoring
The element of the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program
with the most public visibilitiy is game fish fillet monitor-
ing, which directly links the condition of the Great Lakes
to the health of its users. Under the terms of the Great
Lakes Water Quality Agreement and a variety of other
laws, each State has the responsibility and authority to
enact standards to protect the health and safety of its
citizens. For the game fish monitoring element of the
Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program, each State col-
lects a quota of fillets from coho or chinook salmon (or
rainbow trout, if neither is available) under collection
procedures designed by U.S. EPA. Laboratory analysis
is supervised by the US Food and Drug Administration,
and the Great Lakes National Program Office interprets
and reports the data.
The Game Fish Fillet Monitoring program provides
several benefits to environmental monitors:
an estimate of human exposure to pollutants through
the consumption of sport fish;
trend indicators of human exposure over time;
a basin-wide picture of fish contaminants in each
lake, using fish of a single age (the open lake trend
monitoring project uses fish of differing ages); and
wide-scale environmental trends, based on the ef-
fects of toxicants on pelagic fish species.
This information is an important ingredient of the
states' public health advisories on the consumption of
fish caught in each of the lakes. For example, the state
of Michigan advises people to eat no brown trout from
Lake Michigan over 23 inches in length, and only one per
week if the trout is less than 23 inches.
Most states conduct more extensive collection and
analysis programs to support their overall monitoring
systems. The collecting that the states perform for the
Great Lakes National Program Office monitoring activi-
ties is only a small fraction of the states' overall moni-
toring. A major benefit of the Fish Monitoring Program,
however, has been to standardize the collecting and
analysis procedures around the methods employed in
the Great Lakes National Program Office activities. Be-
cause the collection and analysis procedures are now the
same, there is growing interest in establishing common
exposure standards among the states, and eventually
including the Canadian provinces in basin-wide adviso-
ries. This process is complicated by differences among
the states and the federal agencies involved, and by the
fact that some lakes have pollutants notfpund elsewhere
(e.g., mirex in Lake Ontario), that may have both direct
and synergistic interactions with other pollutants.
4. Fish Tumor and Ecosystem Health
Monitoring
The newest element of the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring
Program is tumor monitoring. It has its origin in two
different trends. The first is the noticeable increase in the
incidence of grotesquely deforming tumors in common
fish, such as catfish or bullheads. These visible tumors
create public pressure for better information. The second
trend is associated with the increasing focus within the
Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement on the issue of
overall ecosystem health. Since it is too expensive to
directly measure all the parameters of an ecosystem,
indicators of relative health, such as species diversity,
are needed. One negative indicator of ecosystem health
in the Great Lakes is the incidence of observable tumors
in common varieties of fish.
As a result of these converging trends, scientists in
the Great Lakes National Program Office are working
with other groups to design a fish tiimor monitoring
program that can:
gauge the incidence of tumors;
help identify causes of tumors;
develop a standardized tumor reporting system and
centralized database; and
determine the feasibility of using biochemical and
physiological tests to evaluate contaminant effects
on fisheries.
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Lakes Water Quality Agreement and technically feasible.
Quality control procedures ensure that such changes
continue to meet the objectives of the program.
Interstate Participation
States participate voluntarily in the program for two basic
reasons: to gain access to the Great Lakes Fish Monitor-
ing Program databases; and to benefit from the
program's quality assurance systems. Cooperative
agreements, usually covering a period of five years, are
written to define the terms of participation for each major
actor in each of the collection and analysis programs.
States are most active in the coho/chinookcollection and
analysis phase of the overall program because this
dovetails with the
states' need to issue
health advisories to
residents con-
suming fish from the
Great Lakes.
The Great
Lakes Fish Monitor-
ing Program has
moved participating
states toward com-
mon sampling
protocols and com-
mon standards for
assessing human
risk when issuing
public advisories on
the consumption of
contaminated fish.
Protocols spell out
the number, species, ages, and preparation techniques
to be applied in each collection procedure. Standards
include, for example, agreement on the maximum hu-
man exposure through eating contaminated fish that
state health authorities should permit. The development
of such protocols and standards is an evolutionary proc-
ess encompassing discussion and consultation among
all of the groups involved. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and
Wisconsin began issuing common advisories for con-
suming fish from Lake Michigan in 1985. All states meet
annually or more frequently to exchange data and
to issue common advice on bordering waters.
Characteristics of the Fish
Collection Programs
1. Open Lakes Trend Monitoring
The open lakes trend-monitoring program collects rela-
tively frequent information on long-lived, wide-ranging
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Monitoring Objective
Trend monitoring of fish from the
open lakes
Monitoring emerging problems in
fish from harbors and tributary
mouths
Monitoring potential human
exposure to toxic substances found
in the most commonly consumed
species
Monitoring fish tumors and other
indicators of ecosystem health
Collection Requirements
Collecting whole lake trout
(or walleye) and smelt every two
years.
Collecting whole adult fish from
selected harbors and river mouths in
five-to-ten-year cycles
Collecting coho and Chinook salmon
fillets in alternate years
Studying fish tumors in selected
harbors and tributaries
varieties of fish. In the past, this program has focused on
lake trout and walleye as exemplars of the end of the food
chain. In the most recent agreement between the Fish
and Wildlife Service and the Great Lakes National Pro-
gram Office, the collection of smelt foragers, inter-
mediate in the food chain has been added to the
collection scheme. With greater knowledge about the
dynamic processing of pollutants through the Great Lakes,
the collection of fish from both points in the food chain will
contribute to improved forecasting and modeling of the
lakes' pollution assimilation ability.
This program is designed to assess the overall
effects of toxics on these fish. Therefore, testing for toxic
pollutants is carried out on whole fish, including parts
which are not usually eaten, such as the liver and bones.
These organs con-
centrate pollutants
such as metals.
Pollutants being
measured must meet
three standards:
(1) continuity of test-
ing will be maintained,
that is, the pollutants
tested in the past must
be tested in the fu-
ture;
(2) the specific
analysis techniques
must be comparable
to those used in the
past, to preserve con-
tinuity; and
(3) the specific pollutants (and their precursor or break-
down products) should be known or expected to be
found in the open lakes. This last criterion defines
one of the explicit links between the open lake
monitoring element and elements tested for "emerg-
ing problems" in harbors and tributaries, as dis-
cussed in the next section.
The Fish and Wildlife Service collects and prepares
the samples for this analysis, while the Great Lakes
National Program Office analyzes samples (some of
which are cross-checked by the Fish and Wildlife Service
as part of the Quality Control Program).
2. Emerging Problems in Harbors and
Tributaries
The states and EPA regularly cooperate to collect and
test whole fish (especially varieties which do not range
widely) from major harbors and tributaries. This testing
serves two specific purposes:
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Its technology provides a set of processing stan-
dards that permits each participant to measure trace
contaminants with a high degree of confidence and
precision;
Its accessibility provides states with an archive of
test results produced by U.S. EPA, the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration, and other states, with some
fish samples stored for retrospective documentation
of long-term changes in the condition of the Great
Lakes;
Its strategic design supports key information needs
of basin-wide and state program managers through
collecting the following data:
regular, comparable measures of fish contami-
nation;
regular, comparable indicators of human expo-
sure to major toxic pollutants;
identifiers of new pollutants and pollutant sources,
before the substances are dispersed throughout
the lakes;
short-term measures of the impact of remedia-
tion efforts; and
indicators of ecosystem health and investiga-
tions into the pathology of fish tumors;
Finally, its structure requires relatively little added
effort on the part of participating states.
The Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program provides
flexible, effective, low-cost scientific information to assist
public policy makers in managing the environment.
Managers use the program's applied technology to pro-
tect public health, and to support long-range planning
and program design.
For further information on the Fish Monitoring Program,
contactthe Great Lakes National Program Office (312/353-
3503) or the Office of Marine and Estuarine Protection,
Technical Support Division (202/475-7102).
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