Paired eggs and tissues of individual spawning Chinook and Coho salmon were collected from the Salmon River Fish Hatchery in Altmar, NY in 2015 and 2016 during the NYSDEC annual egg collection. The Salmon River, located in Oswego County, NY, is a Lake Ontario tributary where all of the hatchery-reared pacific salmonid species in Lake Ontario are bred and raised. Each year, the hatchery stocks over 1.4 million Chinook salmon fingerlings, 155,000 Coho fingerlings and 90,000 Coho yearlings into the waters across New York State, including Lake Ontario. The stocked fish spend the next 2-3 years feeding, then return to the hatchery to spawn. Eggs, whole fish and fillet samples were collected and each were analyzed for congener-specific polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), select organochlorine pesticides (OCs), coplanar PCBs (CP-PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzodioxins/furans (PCDD/Fs). Paired eggs and either whole fish or skin-on fillets were evaluated for contaminant burdens, quantitatively similar contaminant levels between maternal tissues and eggs, as well as other parameters. Overall, maternal contaminant burdens present in Coho tissues are lower than are present in Chinook tissue, which is consistent with the length of time the different species spend feeding in Lake Ontario. Total PCB concentrations between 158 and 409 ng/g in Coho tissues and between 193 and 689 ng/g in Chinook tissues illustrated the difference in contamination levels. Total TEQ values ranged between 7 and 19 pg-TEQ/g in Coho and between 12 and 28 pg-TEQ/g in Chinook. High correlation between the contaminant levels in the different tissue sources also indicate that eggs can be readily used as an indicator for the contaminant level present in the spawning females.

Evaluation of legacy and dioxin contaminant levels in salmonid tissues from a Lake Ontario tributary

256th National Meeting (2018)

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