17 



participate in that. They all declined to participate. So there needs 

 to be, as I say, some mechanism to force everyone to participate in 

 this. 



I've often said to colleagues, if we all were faced with jail sen- 

 tences for professional incompetence, we wouldn't be here today, 

 we'd be all hunkered over a table working very closely together to 

 come up with a solution. 



Senator Kempthorne. So you would like us to hold that out as 

 an alternative? 



Mr. FiDLER. You may have to, given the situation as it is. 



[Laughter.] 



Senator Kempthorne. Mr. Fidler, you stated in your opening 

 comments that the monitoring program seemed as though it were 

 specifically designed to avoid finding gas bubble trauma. Could you 

 please expand on that? 



Mr. Fidler. Sure. One of the central recommendations of the 

 NMFS Dissolved Gas Expert Panel was that gill lamellae are the 

 most sensitive indicators of pending signs of gas bubble trauma 

 and that they should be the primary site that should be examined 

 for signs of gas bubble trauma. In the 1995 Monitoring Program, 

 gill lamellae were excluded from the exams. 



Senator KEMPTHORNE. Would you please define that? 



Mr. Fidler. The gill lamellae? 



Senator Kempthorne. Yes. 



Mr. Fidler. OK. Gill lamellae in fish are analogous to our lungs; 

 that is, this is the way fish transport oxygen from the water into 

 their vascular system and this is how they excrete things like CO2 

 and ammonia. This is, in fact, how they transport the 

 supersaturated dissolved gases from the water into the vascular 

 system where they can then form bubbles. The gill lamellae have 

 always, based on information in the literature, been very sensitive. 

 That is one of the first locations you will see bubbles formed in the 

 fish above certain levels of total gas pressure. There are thresholds 

 involved for all of these arrays of signs of gas bubble trauma. I 

 mean thresholds in total gas pressure. They don't all occur at the 

 same total gas pressure, so total gas pressure has to rise to certain 

 levels before you see specific signs of gas bubble trauma. 



As I said, the 1994 Monitoring Program included the examina- 

 tion of gill lamellae as a central component of that. As I mentioned 

 in my testimony, a large number of bubbles were found in 1994. 

 In fact, it was these bubbles that led to the termination of the spill 

 program in 1994. Again, as I mentioned before, 90 to 100 power mi- 

 croscopes were used in that examination in 1994. Now, the Na- 

 tional Biological Service protocol for looking at bubbles in gill 

 lamellae calls for 10 power magnification and not even the use of 

 a microscope. 



So it baffies me why when you had a process in 1994 that 

 worked very well, why you would then back off to something that 

 cannot resolve as well as the 90 to 100 power magnification. Really, 

 the use of 90 to 100 power microscopes, most high school biology 

 classes utilize that kind of work in laboratories, so it's not some 

 new technology or anything like that; it's a very common thing to 

 do and very effective. 



