Is Ocean Pollution Our Number 1 Public Health Problem? Suppose that something poisoned seafood until it was unsafe to eat. Because seafood is the principle source of animal protein for over four billion people, would not such a basic nutritional impact on 70% of the worlds population constitute the biggest public health crisis facing humanity? To see whether just such a scenario is taking place my institute, Ocean Alliance, decided to measure background levels of a suite of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the blubber of sperm whales from all oceans. (As top predators, whales share our vulnerability to the bio-accumulation of contaminants in what they eat.)

We are in the fifth and final year of a voyage that is making these measurements. We will present preliminary results of a subset of our full, 1100 whale, data sample. We have also shown that in sperm whales, the concentration of at least two Cytochrome P450 enzymes (1A1 and 1B1) are directly proportional to the levels of pollutants to which the whale was exposed. Thus, whales can tell humans what we are doing to the oceans, which gives us hope that whales will help save us, rather than the other way around.

Chemicals are but one stressor of sea life. Are the combined effects of several stressors synergistic, as is the case with amphibian tadpoles? When just the smell of a newt predator was added to a low dosage of the common pesticide, carbaryl, the mortality of tadpoles increased from 2% to 92%. To see the possible relevance of such work to marine species we need only substitute Persistent Organic Pollutants for the pesticide, carbaryl, and some other stressor (fishing, noise pollution, ocean acidification) for the smell of the newt predator. The possibilities for synergistic impacts will be discussed.