POLLUTION THREATENS DOLPHINS

Toxins pose dangers to immune systems

By JACK MORSE

The Brunswick News

They called him Flipper and he was faster than lightning, or so the theme song to the popular 1960s television show by the same name goes.

Flipper, a dolphin, had a propensity to save the day just in the nick of time.

But had Flipper lived in the waters off the coast of Brunswick, he would have been the one who needed to be rescued.

A study begun in December 2004 by the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah showed that inshore bottlenose dolphins along Georgia's coast - especially those near Brunswick - are laden with high levels of chemical pollutants.

Erin Pulster, a graduate student in biology at Savannah State University at the time, worked on the study supervised by Keith Maruya, an adjunct professor and research scientist at Skidaway.

She said the toxins will be in the environment for decades to come, and as long as they are in the environment they will continue to be accumulated in fish and dolphins.

"It's still an issue," said Pulster, now a research project coordinator with the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Maine. "The contaminants found in Brunswick are very persistent, and dolphins are unable to metabolize these higher chlorinated PCBs."

High levels of both toxaphene, a pesticide, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), a mixture of chemicals used as a coolant and lubricant, were found in biopsies taken from area dolphins.

Both chemicals, which are now illegal in the United States, were once produced in Brunswick plants. Pulster said the PCB levels in dolphins and fish can be traced to the old LCP Chemicals facility which operated in the Arco neighborhood until 1994. Toxaphene can be traced to a Hercules landfill site located just north of Brunswick and a Hercules discharge site on Terry Creek.

Both the LCP and Hercules sites are on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of Superfund sites because of the environmental threats associated with each.

Although efforts have been made to clean up the areas, progress has been slow.

"It's in the environment now, so it's very hard to get rid of it," Pulster said.

The toxins have not directly caused any dolphin deaths, but they can harm their immune systems, thus making them more susceptible to potentially fatal diseases and illnesses. The contamination can also cause reproductive failure and other problems in the dolphins.

Brad Winn, a senior wildlife biologist with the state department of natural resource's nongame wildlife program, said the situation is unfortunate.

"We're concerned with the well-being of all wildlife populations in the state," he said. "This certainly concerned us, and it concerns me."