Florida scientists are trying to understand the scope of chemical pollution in Tampa Bay.
Steve Murawski, a research professor at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, assembled a team to look for chemical compounds from pesticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals and “forever chemicals.”
The project started after 2020, when extremely high levels of harmful “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS, were discovered in fish from the estuary.
The federal government previously set a standard for certain PFAS chemicals in drinking water to four parts per trillion. Murawski said some bay fish tested five years ago had up to 31,000 parts per trillion.
So, he got federal funding in 2023 to form the Tampa Bay Surveillance Project.
Murawski’s leading a group of researchers, including graduate students, who first started in 2024 by interviewing people who fish for recreation, and more importantly for personal consumption, or subsistence.
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"Subsistence fishers eat Tampa Bay fishes at a much higher rate than they eat normal seafoods and a much higher rate than the average recreational fishermen that maybe go out once or twice a month," Murawski said.
"We started in April of 2024 and we fished. … We used the recreational charter boat industry and some of the captains. And so, we fished basically monthly for the entire year."
The researchers are also studying barnacles, recently installing 17 racks made of PVC framing and glass plates in Tampa Bay to collect the marine crustaceans.
"The nice thing about them is that they grow very quickly, and so we know their complete life history,” Murawski said.
They’ll be cataloging barnacles gathered during the wet and dry seasons separately.
“The reason for that is, during the wet season, you're likely have [stormwater] runoff from the land … a lot of rainfall. And then, it washes into the storm sewers, whereas in the dry season, it's more likely to be point sources; for example, wastewater treatment outfalls,” Murawski said.
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Oysters, water and sediment will be monitored, as well.
Murawski added that climate change is impacting the bay in subtle ways.
“With rising temperatures, the physiology of these animals goes up, right? And so, as the water temperature goes up, their physiology actually increases, and so that means they're probably being exposed to more water over the gills because they're trying to respirate,” Murawski said.
“The other kind of subtle thing is, and we found this out in some of the interviews, that due to the storm activity that occurred last year, many of the traditional places where subsistence and other fishers were fishing from shore are unavailable now, just because they've been wrecked.”
Two grants have funded the Tampa Bay Surveillance Project through 2028: the primary source being a congressionally directed grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And a smaller grant to specifically fund the barnacle project through South Carolina Sea Grant.
“The worst thing that could happen is this becomes an academic study,” Murawski said. “We want to be helpful to the people that run the water system, local and state governments who set regulations and they put out advisories to people ... in general, we want to be helpful to people at large who use the bay.”
