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Preliminary data show mercury values for the particulate matter in 
the Gulf of Maine to vary between 3 and 14 parts per million as you 
can see in the following table: 
MERCURY IN PARTICULATE MATTER OF THE GULF OF MAINE 
Mercury content 
Sample location Depth (meters) 
42°38") Ni IG9°S5% Wie Ak APR E AAPA OEE ae on 0 OF LLRs eee A ORL 10 9.6 
23 5.0 
APAGSUNESIHOT Wan at LL Unk PROLLY ani wei Seek sate a 10 7.5 
25 2.7 
30 4,5 
60 8.7 
Off Long Island our preliminary values are considerably higher, 
varying between 12 and 34 p.p.m. as noted in figure 1. In this figure 
you will notice there are 18 p.p.m. mercury at 24 meters just off Long 
Island Bight. This is in the particulate matter, which consists mostly 
of plankton, 12 p.p.m. mercury at 5 meters off the end of Long Island 
and 34 p.p.m. of mercury at 20 meters further out to sea. These latter 
values are within the range reported for the fish that caused the 
Minamata disease in Japan. However, we must emphasize that this 
preliminary data needs to be verified by further analyses. In addi- 
tion, we do not know that this level is unusual for marine suspended 
matter nor do we know whether or not the mercury is further con- 
centrated in the food chain. Currently, work is proceeding on the 
analysis of larger collections of plankton and fishes in order to answer 
some of these questions. It should be further emphasized here that 
we have no analyses for mercury in fish or shellfish along the New 
Jersey-New York coast. I am simply pointing out that these pre- 
liminary analyses of the particulate matter at the beginning of the 
food chain are putting up a danger signal which we cannot ignore 
if we are to preserve our fishing industry. 
I have cited mercury as a typical highly toxic heavy metal but 
there are many others such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, 
nickel, beryllium, and vanadium that are also toxic but we know very 
little about their uptake by plankton and their migration through 
the marine food chain. 
In addition to heavy metals there are many toxic chemicals—some 
of these Senator Moakley mentioned in his previous statement—which 
are sometimes dumped at sea in barrels such as phenols, ketones, 
aromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons. and so on. Many 
of these materials should be burned, neutralized, recycled or disposed 
of in some manner by a disposal company, or refinery, rather than 
being dumped at sea, because it is impossible to guarantee that any 
container will retain its contents indefinitely. I also put radioactive 
wastes in this category of dangerous substances that should not be 
dumped at sea. It has been estimated that at any given time during 
the year 2000 there will be one billion curies of radioactive waste 
from fission plants being transported on the highways of the United 
States toward burial grounds (4). I can only say that if the sea 
becomes the burial grounds it will tragically alter life in the sea 
as we know it. 
