Fish Used to Assess Environment Damage

BATON ROUGE, La. - Federal and state biologists are fanning out across the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast this week, collecting fish, shellfish and sediment to measure the toxic footprint Katrina left in the water.

The sampling is aimed at a soup of hazards — sewage from flooded treatment plants, oil from ruptured storage tanks and sunken barges, pesticides and solvents washed out of garages and factories — all of which drained off the city and into Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River and the Gulf itself.

"We are essentially taking the Gulf's temperature after it swallowed New Orleans' bathwater," said a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. "Fish are the integration device — whatever is out there ends up in them."

Early results show elevated bacteria levels along much of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, and officials have warned against swimming or eating fish caught near the outflows. Several fish kills have been reported in canals and bayous where floodwater stagnated and oxygen collapsed.

The Environmental Protection Agency says it has confirmed more than 40 oil spills of varying size in the storm's path, including two large tank ruptures in St. Bernard Parish that coated neighborhoods in crude.

Longer-term worries center on the sediment itself. Decades of industrial runoff already lay on the bottom of local waterways; scientists fear the storm stirred it up and spread it across marshes critical to the region's battered seafood industry.

Louisiana's shrimp and oyster beds supply a large share of the nation's catch. State officials say most offshore grounds escaped serious harm, but the inshore nurseries near the flood plumes face months of testing before they can reopen.

"The gulf is resilient — it has absorbed floods and storms forever," a university marine scientist said. "What is different is the scale, and what was in the water this time."