So walk me through the
science of what we have
here and what
step in the process we're in.
Okay, so we're at nearly the
beginning.
We're kind of at the midway point
here.
So typically what we do is
we have, usually
we have the spears collect the fish
for us, and we pay usually $10
a fish or so.
And then we try to get at least 12
per lake where we're aiming.
And so that doesn't always happen.
Sometimes we collect the fish
through population assessments.
And that's the way we got
these, and these came from Michigan.
From our sister agency,
KVSC, and
so we're assessing,
right now we're assessing the
mercury content of the fish
as well as the PFOS
content of the fish.
And I say mercury, but it's actually
methylmercury.
There's a big difference there.
A lot of people, whenever you speak
on that, they think of the
inorganic metal, when really we're
dealing with the organic metal,
which is a mercury that
has been methylated by
typically anaerobic bacteria.
In, say, a marshland
or a bog.
So the factors that contribute
to that are your
levels of sulfate,
your pH contributes, and
as well as the dissolved oxygen.
So as anaerobic bacteria work
on this stuff, a lake
with lower dissolved oxygen,
acidity, higher acidity and
then potentially higher sulfates,
you'll see an increase in methyl
mercury in those fish populations.
So it's important for you to study
different links, because even if
they're next to each other, links
may be different, right?
Yes, that's exactly right, and we're
also monitoring trends over time.
So this program has been enacted
since, I want to say 1996 or
so, and so it's been going on
for nearly 30 years at this point.
What have you seen over that time?
Actually we've seen the trends
are steady.
They follow what you would expect,
you know, larger fish by
accumulation.
They tend to have more
methylmercury content.
Right now the focus is actually
towards PFOS.
We're trying to detect hot
spots and so with
the fish you not only are you making
a food consumption advisory.
To let people know if the fish are
safe to eat within that lake,
but also we are at
the same time looking at
the quality of water, because if
your water is contaminated, your
fish will be contaminated as well.
What are the main concerns with
methylmercury?
Obviously, the consumption is
the issue.
So your main concerns are it
is a neurotoxicant or
neurotoxin.
So with methylmercury,
it is very
toxic to
our special populations,
to women who may become pregnant,
women who are pregnant, children,
infants, newborns,
anything that
has a developing brain.
Is highly susceptible
to methylmercury toxicity.
And are people more aware of these?
I mean, I've obviously been doing this
study a long time.
Are people becoming more aware that
they should take that seriously?
Ah, more aware,
we need, all right,
so more aware.
They are aware, but as far
as like the intricate details of it,
I would say no, we are, we need to
do more on that part.
Like I said earlier, a lot of people
believe it's like the liquid metal
mercury, but no.
Here we're dealing with a organic
form of mercury.
In fact, a
lotta metals,
if a metal is safe, take
tin, for example.
If you stick a methyl group, a
couple methyl groups on tin,
that metal goes from a safe metal to
a quite toxic metal.
So organic metals are
typically something to always be
concerned of.
And mercury is found everywhere
in the universe, right?
But yeah, mercury is a natural...
Mercury is a natural occurring
compound.
When Marcus was speaking on earlier
how there is atmospheric deposition
of mercury, that's just something
that happens naturally from
combustion of fossil fuels,
combustion of anything that's going
on in the industry, goes up into
the air, and then it slowly will
out and then it's there's
a they have this model there's
people put this down to a math and
then And so
usually where there's a higher
concentration of industry, you can
see more mercury deposition.
In the past, whenever the
United States was in its industrial
age, like we
were making metal manufacturing back
here, that's when the
levels were higher.
They're looking at, what is that
bay called out of Duluth?
St. Louis?
St. Lewis River Estuary?
Yeah, so they're monitoring that.
Keeping track of those levels
because that's a lot of industry in
that area.
We saw one of the fish where we saw
a lot of the other fish popping out
of her. Just talk about that food
prop. OK.
Okay, so the bioaccumulation.
So, you know, once the mercury is
deposited into the soil, the water,
it then becomes part of the, you,
know, the natural cycle of things.
It is taken up, you know, you
imagine like a little bacterium.
They just suck that mercury up,
methylate it, send it out, you now,
and sometimes it can even become
double methylated.
So you have methylmercury,
but typically the
equilibrium tends to fall on the
methylmercahy side.
So once it's deposited,
the anaerobic bacteria, bacteria get
a hold of it and then the peat and
the marsh and the bog and the
soil.
Slowly gets accumulated up
through, let's say, the Daphnia, the
little water fleas, the little water
bugs, and then they accumulate
it and then you have the little fish
come and feed on those, and the
little fishes get fed on slowly
but surely by the larger walleye and
then, you know, up the food chain it
goes. And so you have a
bioaccumulation effect,
a magnification of methylmercury
in, say, your larger, older fish.
And that's why there's always the
warnings about the size of the fish
and the size of the flake.
Exactly so that's
where yes, that's exactly where the
warnings come about regarding the
size of the fish and The
age so you typically want to stay
below 20 inches on
your fish size for eating The
sweet spot I would say is around 15
inches to 18 inches
That's your sweet spot for eating
and safety.
So what do we know about?
Of Peafox.
It's a developing field at the
moment. It is,
we
are learning it is a
compound that we are detecting in
extremely small quantities.
That's why we have the foil there to
help with any cross contamination.
What we know about PFOS is it's
another forever chemical.
Just like PCBs, PFOS will be
around until we're all dead and
gone. It'll be around forever.
And so we're monitoring,
all right, let's start where we
know, so PFOS,
where we expect to find PFOS are
runoff areas around
landfills, airports,
and firefighter training areas.
Those are our three main hotspots,
so if you live anywhere around
there.
And not not say per se a modern
landfill because now they're being
designed to control
for that but an old landfill that
doesn't have per se the liner you
would have
runoff you see from the leachate
off of that landfill and that
leachates would lead into the
waterways and then you would see
from that fish, hopefully
first, testing that area
increased amounts of say PFOS.
So PFOS is a catch-all umbrella term
for many per
fluorocarbon chains.
So the main culprits
we're looking at are PFOS, P-F-O-S,
and PFAS, P-F-A-S
for right now, there are many
others.
15,000 or so to
be exact or more
So, but are they, do we know
if that's equally distributed in
every element of the water
and the fish and the meat?
Uh, no, it's not equally
distributed.
Um, like I said,
it, like you have your hotspots,
right?
But I guess if there's a run-off
area, isn't all the fish that come
through there, or is that what we're
still trying to figure out, whether
it's in the filet or if it's
constant?
Yeah, so we do have data
on that, that comes from Gavin, our
PFAS guy, he's in Madison.
So he has data that
states that the PFAS is concentrated
in the head.
And he thinks it's the
wildlife cheeks, but I disagree.
I think it's stuck in the brain,
because it's a
fatty molecule, but it's not.
I believe it
kind of mimics cholesterol,
and you know, your brain is high on
cholesterol.
Or it tries to, it gets incorporated
there.
But that's where the science, we
need to know more.
We need to know more, so honestly
if I want to write a grant,
I would write a grant for Marcus to
collect brains and we would
sample those brains and see if the
PFOS is actually concentrated, but
first we have to find the hot spot
to find where these PFOS
concentrated fish are.
We do have a few lakes that we know
that are hits and so once
we have those we can actually focus
on those areas and then focus on the
fish in that ecosystem to see how
that PFOS actually is.
If it is accumulating, where is it
accumulating? Is it in tissues, is
it in certain organs, that sort of
thing.
It's possible that taking a filet
sample to look for pithos, you may
not find it even if it is present
in that water body, right?
Or is it simultaneously
testing the water to determine that
that's a hot spot?
Because right now you're only
testing the filet.
We're only testing the fish.
The USGS test the water,
other agencies handle water,
but we have within our GIS system,
we have it mapped out so that our
lakes are chosen
that are highly suspected
to be contaminated
with PFOS.
And is that a bigger
threat long-term than...
No.
I mean, that's comparing apples and
oranges. They both pose
their own special threats.
I mean, you still have PCBs in the
background here.
That's the OG forever chemical.
Polychlorinated biphenyls,
PCBs.
In terms of, like, the work
that you guys are doing here, is it
always going to be, like what's the
new thing to worry about, what's
new?
Uh, yeah, kind of, uh,
if you want to be a little cynical
about it, uh yeah,
we got methyl mercury, now we have
PFOS, soon it will be microplastics,
after that it will 6 PPD coming out
of your tires, I mean,
this is a sense
of monitoring, so we're not
going to fix what's happening, but
we were able to monitor what's
happened, so say this is
Ruth Lake, Ruth Lake right now may
be clean, but I'll come back five
years from now.
My fish are showing numbers that
weren't there, that
weren't there in the previous years
that we sampled.
So now we know that there's activity
going around that lake that
is running off into there.
And we need to alert whoever needs
to know so that they can
figure out how to control
that point source pollution.
So the reason for
choosing Walleye to do the testing,
is it just, it's an Apex Predator?
Apex predator.
Everyone wants it.
It's like you said, it's
a high commodity. It is a fish of
the people.
I mean, whenever I posted my
picture, my selfie picture, like
friends from Louisiana are like,
that's a walleye.
I was like, yeah, how'd you know?
But yeah, they know, everyone knows
it's walleye, so I mean you got
musky too, people love musky, but
nothing compares to the walleye up
here. As far as the fishing,
everyone wants walleye Yeah,
everyone want's it.
So that's why you would test that
rather than something else.
I mean we also test other fish.
We test sturgeon, we test murk,
muskie, we test whitefish out of
Lake Superior, we test lake trout
out of lake Superior.
Right now we're focused on the
inland lakes. We do the Lake
Superior in the fall, we work on the
Inland Lakes in the spring.
So like we're in the summer now so
we're wrapping up the project.
All these samples are due Friday.
But it's probably hard to imagine
that people would ever not
eat walleye, so you might as well
know what it is.
No one's going to stop.
No one's gonna stop. So the best
thing to do is educate.
So if I can if I could convince
people to put the big fish up on the
wall or leave it in the water so it
keeps responding the lakes
and he's
shaking his head.
But I
mean you saw that big one we got 230
grams nearly half a pound
off of one filet.
So I'll tell you one thing my uncle
always copy.
This isn't catching release.
Yeah, it's not catching release, so
the thing is we have to catch and
educate.
So, catch, educate.
You can eat a contaminated fish,
but you're going to want to eat a
small piece of that filet and
you're gonna want to do a literature
search on anything that can
attenuate the toxicity of
methylmercury. And there are studies
out there that have data to
back that up.
I believe the top dog in
methylmercury studies right now is a
guy called Michael
could be even closer to retired, but
if you go into PubMed, search
Methylmercury, his name is almost on
every single publication.
Anything else that we should know
what is the next step?
So you guys are just taking the
samples here, and then you bring me
over to a lab, right?
Right, so typically the next
step, they would go in the freezer
but since we're doing a mock trial
transport, I have four
samples, four lakes that
we're going to do like a little mock
trial run. I'm going to get
everything prepped, settled.
You already got those in the
freezer? No, they're right there.
So we had the PFOS.
The PFOS ones that you saw were the
ones wrapped in foil to help with
any kind of cross-contamination.
The mercury ones were the ones that
went into the bag without any foil.
We had the the otoliths for aging.
We have two sets this time,
typically there's only one set, our
sister agency KBFC,
they're training one of their own
LTEs to how to age the
fish. So we get the age, we get
weight, we got the length,
and we get tissue weight.
That's going to be a, I believe
that's a wet analysis on that
tissue.
And so all these things factor in
together to help us know the
proper mercury content of the
tissue as well.
And so the ODA list,
one set will go here for
our aging purposes here and that
will go into the database and then
the other set will be going to KBIC
and there they're going to be
doing a quality assurance
or quality assessment.
I got this, this is actually a
secret, they're gonna find out after
this airs, but I'm
checking their numbers, seeing that
they're aging right, and we're gonna
compare the ages, so it's a lab
check. What does KBIC stand
for? I don't know.
Q&A Bay Indian Community.
Q& A Bay Indian
community.
Alright, can I get you to
say and spell your name, give your
title while we got you here?
Do I do the doctor?
All right, my name is Dr. Joshua
Salley.
Dr. Josh Salley, J-O-S-H-U-A-S
A-L-L E-Y.
I'm originally from Louisiana.
I got a job here at GlyphWake
beginning in March after
what, my second
midlife crisis.
And what's your title here?
My title here is the Environmental
Toxicologist.
All right, very cool.