Recent Trends in Coastal 



Environmental Quality: 



Results from the First Five Years of 



the NOAA Mussel Watch Project 



Thomas P. O'Connor 



Coastal Monitoring Branch 



Coastal Monitoring and Bioeffects Assessment Division 



INTRODUCTION 



Following increasing public and scien- 

 tific concern about the quality of the 

 marine environment and the absence of 

 any long-term national monitoring pro- 

 gram in the United States in the early 

 1 980's, the National Oceanic and Atmo- 

 spheric Administration (NOAA) cre- 

 ated the National Status and Trends 

 (NS&T) Program in 1984. The program 

 monitors trends of chemical contamina- 

 tion and assesses the effects of human 

 activities on coastal and estuarine areas 

 around the Nation. It has been analyz- 

 ing estuarine and coastal sediments and 

 tissue samples from selected organisms 

 for a broad suite of trace metals and 

 organic chemicals. Samples are col- 

 lected from a network of sites located 

 around the coastline of the U.S. Tissues 

 are also examined for evidence of bio- 

 logical response to environmental con- 

 tamination such as liver tumors and 

 reproductive damage. 



Since 1986, the NOAA Mussel Watch 

 Project, a major component of the NS&T 

 Program, has been making the same 

 chemical measurements on surface sedi- 

 ments and whole soft-parts of mussels 

 and oysters collected from about 200 

 coastal and estuarine sites. Recent re- 

 sults from the Mussel Watch Project 

 describe the spatial distribution of coastal 

 contamination and, where temporal 

 trends exist, show contamination to be 

 decreasing in many instances. This find- 

 ing implies that some benefits have re- 

 sulted from the management of chemi- 

 cal use and discharge. However, data 

 for more years will be necessary to dis- 

 tinguish the effects of human activity 

 from those of natural influences on some 

 of these chemical concentrations. 



SAMPLING SITES AND SPECIES 



The need for large-scale and long-term 

 monitoring was emphasized by a U.S. 

 National Research Council report (NRC, 

 1990) indicating that more than $130 



