Assessing the Biological Effects of Anthropagenic Contaminants In Situ

This paper presents a monitoring strategy for assessing the effects of anthropogenic contaminants on aquatic organisms. This strategy takes advantage of our increased understanding of the mechanisms which underlie stress metabolism as a basis for assessing stress in native organisms in situ. General stress responses which react to a wide range of environmental factors are used to initially screen for deleterious biological effects due to contaminants. If data from this screening indicates that organisms are stressed, stressor-specific responses which are elicited by contaminants or classes of contaminants would be measured to identify the causative factors. These data allow us to determine both the extent of biological stress in native organisms in situ and identify the environmental factors responsible for the observed effects.