In Boston Harbor, the amount of closed areas fluctuates, but it remains around 
2,800 acres which remain open. Now, Cheryl stated that when the MDC is bypassing 
sewage everything shuts down, so we have zero acres open in Boston Harbor. And that 
condition might last for as many as two or three weeks, and then the areas are reopened 
when the bacterial counts go down and the shellfish are harvested again. 
I think that Boston Harbor, as far as the shellfishing and the productivity of 
the shellfish are concerned, probably has some bearing on the pollution load because 
Boston Harbor is one of the most productive standing crop shellfish areas we have in the 
state. 
I don't have any information on whether this problem is getting worse. There 
is no trend information, obviously, but just from the development along our coast, I'd have 
to believe~and it's strictly no more than a personal opinion based on no scientific data-- 
that the problem is in a lull and may be getting worse. Maybe the Water Resources 
Authority can begin to turn this around. 
But if we go back to what happened in New Bedford Harbor in 1977, the 
discharge of PCBs had stopped. What we've seen since then is a general degradation of 
the level of PCBs in the animals within the Harbor. But the level has come down, and it 
has stabilized, so we're still at a level whereby PCBs are still showing up over the limits 
of the Federal standards. The point is that since the PCBs have been shut off in New 
Bedford Harbor, there has been some degradation of the amounts showing up in the 
animals. 
R. Murchelano: I'd like to make another comment which has to do with a 
question that you very acutely identified. And that was, is this particular phenomenon 
addressing the one which I know best: the one involving the hepatic lesions? If this 
phenomenon has existed for a long time, why aren't the populations of animals depressed 
in that Harbor if the same thing is happening to fish that have cancer as happens to 
mammals that have cancer? That's a very fundamental question, and obviously there is no 
way I can address that because there is no body of information. I'll say that for the first 
time. 
But that's really not the only important thing. Some individuals here were at 
that hearing with me held at the House Committee on Merchant Marine Fisheries. 
Congressman Breaux from Louisiana said it, and I think he said it best of all the 
individuals that I've heard address this topic of Environmental Degradation and Biological 
Effect, and that is, "The fish are telling you something, but you're not listening too well." 
And if these fish have a phenomenon which is called cancer, we don't know 
what it does to them because we haven't worked with fish to the extent that we have 
worked with mammals with this particular phenomenon. But it should be obvious that 
whatever is happening to fish, could possibly happen to you as well. So the societal 
consequences of a phenomena of this nature are more than what I address from a resource 
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