Organic Contaminants Track Bottlenose Dolphin Habitat Utilization in the Florida Panhandle

1
Organic Contaminants Track Bottlenose Dolphin
Habitat Utilization in the Florida Panhandle

• RM Wilson

2
Why are we interested in these animals?

• UMEs
• Lack of Baseline Data

3
Community as an ecological construct

• Bottlenose dolphins tend to aggregate into
  subgroups that shareranges, exhibit similar
  genetic profiles, and interact with each other to
  a much greater extent than with dolphins in
  adjacent waters
• NMFS community is the functioning unit of
  their respective ecosystem.

4
Methods to Track Habitat Utilization

• Photo-identification
• Radio tracking
• Chemical tracers

5
Cast of Characters

• PCBs
• DDTs
• BDEs
• chlordanes

6
Study Area
?
7
Sampling
8
Extraction and Analysis

• ASE collagen removal
• GPC lipid removal
• SPE final clean-up
• GC-MS
• EI PCBs, DDTs, BDEs
• NCI chlordanes

9
Results

• 55 POC congeners were quantified
• 34 PCB congeners
• 6 DDT congeners
• 6 BDE congeners
• 5 chlordane congeners dieldrin HCB mirex

10
(No Transcript)
11
Contaminant Classes
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Comparison of the 3 proposed communities
15
Conclusions

• Bottlenose dolphins of the region sampled form at
  least 3 three distinct communities
• Eastern dolphins are differentiated by sighting
  data and concentration
• St Joe Bay and St Andrews Bay dolphins are
  differentiated by congener type

16
Acknowledgements

• Doug Nowacek and Jeff Chanton
• John Kucklick
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
  Charleston, SC
• P. Becker, J. Keller, S. Van der Pol, J. Yordy,
  A. Guichard, D. Ellisor
• Brian Balmer
• University of North Carolina-Wilmington
• T. Rowles
• National Marine Fisheries Service