Scripps Fish Pollution Study Receives $680,000 from Waitt Foundation

Gift helps Scripps scientists answer the question: What's in your fish dinner?

A recent $680,000 grant from the Waitt Foundation to Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will advance understanding of emerging pollution risks to oceans and human health from seafood contamination. The work, led by Scripps marine biologists Amro Hamdoun and Stuart Sandin, will also raise public awareness of the ocean’s pollution problems and inspire solutions.

In the past century, humans have put 83,000 synthetic industrial compounds into the environment. Five thousand of these chemicals are high production volume chemicals, produced at volumes of thousands of metric tons annually. Humans have also dramatically changed the environmental levels of natural harmful compounds such as carbon dioxide and mercury, and many modern industrial compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, non-stick coatings, and flame-retardants, are highly persistent.

Unfortunately the oceans are a repository for these global pollutants, and in turn, human exposure to these ocean pollutants is often directly linked to consumption of seafood. This gift from the Waitt Foundation will help Scripps address the urgent need to measure the scale of the ocean pollution problem and to determine the extent to which it presents a threat to human and environmental health through consumption of seafood.

"We have put many thousands of new industrial chemicals into the oceans over the past 50 years," said Hamdoun. "We need to know more about which ones are accumulating in the fish we eat so that we can develop strategies to make less persistent industrial compounds. This project is the first step in understanding the types of chemicals that accumulate."

To help understand the threat and determine solutions, Hamdoun and Sandin will estimate levels and distributions of modern industrial chemicals in the global seafood supply of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares). Yellowfin tuna is among the most important fisheries targets worldwide, supporting fishing activities worldwide in tropical and subtropical seas.

Their study will answer the critical questions concerning modern chemicals in fish, the geographic bounds of these chemicals, and which are emerging as major risks.

About The Waitt Foundation

The Waitt Foundation is a charitable organization based in La Jolla, California.  Since 1993, the Foundation has made over 2,000 grants to programs that help us understand our past, improve the present, and prepare for the future. The Foundation funds partnerships and projects that seek a deeper understanding of our collective history, expand the potential of the human mind, and improve knowledge and understanding through historical and scientific research and exploration. For more information, see www.waittfoundation.org.