Project

Monitoring Pollution with Mussels

Using mussels as environmental pollution indicators.

Marine ecosystems depend on healthy nutrient balances to thrive. When humans introduce excessive amounts of these nutrients through anthropogenic activities, these ecosystems can fall out of balance and collapse. Excessive nitrogen, in particular, can produce harmful algal blooms that lead to a host of other issues like shellfish toxicity, oxygen depletion, and coastal acidification. Traditional nitrogen monitoring methods can be costly and often fail to paint the whole picture. To construct more complete maps of human-associated nitrogen loading to our marine ecosystems, we measure nitrogen stable isotopes in mussels from numerous coastal sites. This is because mussels continuously filter food from the water, and in the process intake nitrogen that can be linked to humans or natural sources.

Project Goals:

  • Construct maps of possible human-associated nitrogen loading to coastal marine ecosystems based on nitrogen isotope variations in mussels.
  • Use mussel nitrogen isotope maps to inform more targeted nitrogen monitoring programs.
  • Help decision-makers develop more robust and informed nitrogen loading mitigation strategies.
  • Create a baseline for coastal nitrogen inputs to compare to future conditions.
Freshly harvested mussels

2018 Mussel Isotope Monitoring Report

In 2018, we collected mussels from a total of 100 sites throughout Casco Bay and analyzed for nitrogen isotope ratios in their tissues to map out regions with higher levels of human-associated nitrogen.

Project Team

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