Progress report summarizing the reef fish sampling, PCB - Earthjustice

These additions were intended to 1) add a nearby site for a year to address FWC
and Florida Department of Health (FDOH) concerns about the possibility of
regionally elevated PCB levels in reef fishes on other large artificial reef structures,
particularly shoreward of the Oriskany Reef; 2) slightly increase numbers of fish
retained for analysis to attempt to capture under-represented invertivore (porgies,
gray triggerfish) and piscivore (grouper); 3) attempt to gain through a one-time
tagging effort, site fidelity information on targeted reef fish at the Oriskany Reef 4)
return to a twice a year sampling regime at the Oriskany Reef by adding back a
late/fall sampling effort and 5) conduct visual SCUBA assessments of the Oriskany
Reef community as it developed and assess changes in the physical condition of the
ship.
The US Navy models predicted the leaching behavior of PCBs aboard Ex-Oriskany
to follow an initial “pulse” release, and then diminish to a low-level steady state
within two years after deployment. At the time of planning the third fish collection
effort, FWC and ECMRD took the proactive measure of adding an additional fish
collection site to serve as a background check during Sampling Rounds #3 and #4.
The Florida Department of Health wanted to ensure that elevated PCB levels in
fish tissue weren’t typical of other area artificial reef fish communities. Thus, the
Pensacola Bay Fishing Bridge Reef #1 (PBFBR#1) was selected for similar fish
collection and analysis to provide an indication of “background” PCB concentrations
in reef fish on an artificial reef in the north central Gulf of Mexico on the same days
the Oriskany Reef was sampled. PBFBR#1 was constructed during the same year as
the creation of the Oriskany Reef (17 loads completed in December of 2006).
PBFBR#1 was located about eight nautical miles to the northwest and inshore of
the Oriskany Reef in about 84 feet of water (see EELAARS Area Map, Figure 3).
The PBFBR#1 Reef was constructed from approximately 8,140 tons of steel
reinforced concrete bridge rubble from the demolition of the Pensacola Bay Fishing
Bridge across Pensacola Bay connecting Gulf Breeze to Pensacola. After two
sampling rounds at PBFBR#1, conducted on February 3, 2008 and April 29, 2008,
the EPA recommended that FWC and Escambia County drop PBFBR#1 and use
remaining limited funding resources to focus exclusively on the Oriskany Reef as
the Monitoring Work plan originally required (Personal communication with Dr.
Roland Ferry, EPA Region 4).
Target reef fish sampling numbers were pro-actively increased from 30 to 35 reef
fish samples retained for PCB analysis in Sampling Round #7 and from 30 to 39 in
Sampling Round #8 in an effort to procure under represented invertivore (red
porgies, whitebone porgies, gray triggerfish) and piscivore (groupers) while still
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