URI professor concerned for the Narragansett Bay

Out of nearly 200 Bays in the U.S., the Narragansett Bay is the only one in

Rhode Island, and is also one of the 20 most contaminated in the country,

according to Ken Shane of the Jamestown Press.

 

Dr. Rebecca Robinson, Assistant Professor at URI's Graduate School of

Oceanography, specializes in studying the contaminants of the

Narragansett Bay.

 

Robinson expressed her care for the Bay when she said, “It’s important.

We live on Narragansett Bay. We get fish from it, some of us sail, or kayak,

or we like to do recreation, it’s an important nursery for other fish that

come in, spawn, and then go back out into the open ocean. So it is a

system that serves both the human and nonhuman populations in the

area.”

 

Tom Kutcher of the Providence Journal painted a bit more of a disturbing

picture when describing the Narragansett Bay in an article.

 

Kutcher said, “Picture your favorite 5-year-old (it’s easy for me — I can just

look at my own boy). Now picture him swimming in a pool of water

contaminated with enough sewage to make him sick. Picture him

swimming in a soup of pet waste, oil, grease and yard chemicals. Picture

him swimming among dead crabs and fish.”

 

When speaking with Robinson she went on to talk about the impact it can have on the local fisheries.

 

“One of the big fears associated with the nutrient reductions was that it was going to have a negative impact on the fisheries on things like larval fisheries, quahogs, and mussels, because if you reduce the amount of nutrients and you reduce the phytoplankton,” Robinson said. “Maybe that’s what those organisms are eating and you’re going to reduce what is called the secondary production, or the things that eat the primary producers.”

 

Robinson goes on to talk about what is still causing contamination despite our knowledge and efforts to prevent it. She explains how as old contaminants begin to be filtered out, new one’s begin to emerge from new products such as the hormones released in birth control and  or the triclosan from antibacterial soaps. As we wash these things off of our bodies they go down our drains and get released into the Bay.

 

It wasn’t all negative however. Robinson also discussed ways that we have improved and even more what we can do as individuals to help limit contamination.

 

She said, “We are more aware of what we are putting into the water and we have done things like reduce nutrient loads. I think it peaked in the 80’s and it’s actually getting better now, in terms of nutrients…. As we are reducing the loading at the waist product treatment facilities I think that the importance of cesspools and people not dealing with their septic tanks and people fertilizing their lawns are becoming proportionally more important. So if the biggest single contaminant used to be waste water treatment, as that goes down it means the other ones become more important in the whole system.”