A Morphometric Assessment of the Condition of White Croakers (Genyonemus lineatus) and Queenfish (Seriphus politus) with Access to a Wastewater Outfall and a DDT/PCB Superfund Site: A Los Angeles Outer Harbor Case Study.

Sediments and water columns in the Los Angeles Outer Harbor, a major port behind a breakwater, contain DDTs and PCBs from a nearby superfund site and contaminants brought in by ships, boats, stormwater, a river and a wastewater outfall. White croaker, a bottom feeder, and queenfish, a water column feeder, are two bioindicators for this marine ecosystem whose conditions are assumed to be robust for this role at all times. The current study tests this benign assumption amidst progressively increasing DDTs/PCBs levels in their tissues. Results, as evident by progressively shrinking gonads, show a less than robust white croaker population particularly. While the males are generally larger than the female fish, the length (standard (SL) or total (TL)) and body mass (BM) of 80 white croakers collected over a period of eight years were found to be similar irrespective of gender (177 mm, 212 mm and 114 g, respectively). Queenfish (67) did not show such similarity over the same period (female: 152 mm SL, 177mm TL, 56 g BM; male: 145 mm SL, 172 mm TL, 50 g BM). The site-specific expressions/values capturing the current conditions of these fish are SL=0.835[TL]-1.68 (r 2 =0.914, n=68) and SL=0.891[TL]-8.88 (r 2 =0.961, n=50) for white croaker and queenfish, respectively. In the allometric growth equation BM=a[SL] b , a and b are 2.83×10-4 and 2.49 (r 2 =0.817) for white croakers, and 6.10×10-5 and 2.73 (r 2 =0.825) for queenfish, respectively. The relative coefficients of condition K n are 0.97±0.07 and 1.01±0.12 for white croakers and queenfish, respectively. Molecular level studies are needed to establish definitively the links between DDTs/PCBs bioaccumulation in fish tissues and the robustness of the fish populations. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.