Influence of Sediment Contaminated with Untreated Pulp and Paper Mill Effluent on Winter Flounder, Pleuronectes americanus

Abstract

This study was conducted to ascertain the influence of sediment contaminated with pulp and paper mill effluent in a fjord on winter flounder, Pleuronectes americanus, based on a laboratory study. Flounder, captured from a pristine site, were exposed in a flow-through system for 16 weeks to sediment collected at 2, 5, 7, and 10 km from the outfall. A group of controls was placed in uncontaminated sediment. Mortality occurred almost exclusively in fish exposed to sediment taken from 2 km than from more distant sites. Additionally, the condition factor was lower, the liver was enlarged, and toxicopathic lesions in the liver and spleen were significantly greater in fish submerged in the sediment than in fish from the more distant locations or the controls. Two ectoparasites including a ciliate, Trichodina jadranica, and a monogenean, Gyrodactylus pleuronecti, were observed only in the control group, while a digenean in the digestive tract, Steringophorus furciger, was more abundant in fish exposed to sediment from sites more distant from the outfall and the controls than at 2 km. Comparison of these results with data from a previous gradient field study on biological variables in winter flounder, captured at 2, 5, 7, and 10 km down-current from the outfall, revealed an enlarged liver that was associated with elevated levels of detoxification of hepatic enzymes and prevalence of toxicopathic lesions in both the liver and the spleen; these were significantly greater in samples taken nearest to the outfall from the mill than at more distant sites. Moreover, two metazoan parasites, S. furciger (Digenea) and Echinorhynchus gadi (Acanthocephala), in the digestive were more abundant in samples taken at farther locations and also from the reference sites. These results, based on a laboratory study, are in agreement with previous observations that winter flounder exposed to sediment at the site nearest to the outfall, where high concentrations of toxic contaminants persisted, was greater than in the fish from the other locations.