Word: plankton
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Sound's tiny Zooplankton (.04 ppm), then built up further in the fatty tissue of plankton-eating fish (.5 ppm). These small fish, in turn, were devoured by larger fish with yet another increase in DDT concentration (2.0 ppm). By the time the chemical had passed into the bodies of such fish-eating birds as cormorants, mergansers and ospreys its concentration (25 ppm) had increased an astounding 10 million times over the original amount (see diagram...
Airborne Cats. Beyond the danger to fish and birds lies DDT's threat to the whole ecological system. Concentrations of DDT no larger than a few parts per billion in plankton, says Biologist Charles F. Wurster Jr., chief scientific adviser to a New York conservationist group called the Environmental Defense Fund, can substantially hinder the photosynthesis process. On a larger scale, such interference could have a devastating effect, since phytoplankton produces 70% of the earth's oxygen...
...from U.S. lakes daily by commercial and sport fishermen is contaminated. A classic example is Clear Lake, Calif., where DDT (at the minuscule proportion of two one-hundredths of a part per million parts of water) was used to kill off a troublesome, lake-hatching insect. As a result, plankton accumulated DDT residues at five parts per million; fatty tissue of fish feeding on lake-bottom life was found to contain several hundred to 2,000 parts of DDT per million; grebes and other diving birds died from eating the fish. The New York health department reports high concentrations...
...wreck of the tanker Torrey Canyon. In Cornwall, the British government dumped 1,000,000 gallons of detergents and chemicals on the beaches and into the ocean. The sands and rocks now are without a trace of tar, but the sea is practically devoid of plankton, which nourishes such underwater creatures as limpets and winkles. By contrast, when the slick floated to the coast of Brittany, the French insisted that toxic detergents should not be used. Scooping up the oil was slower, but less destructive to sea life. However, the bird population has never recovered from the oil. The rare...
...application of only one-half pound of DDT per acre of forest to control the spruce budworm has twice wiped out almost an entire year's production of young salmon in the Miramichi River. In this process, rain washes the DDT off the ground and into the plankton of lakes and streams. Fish eat the DDT-tainted plankton; the pesticide becomes concentrated in their bodies, and the original dose ultimately reaches multifold strength in fish-eating birds, which then often die or stop reproducing. DDT is almost certainly to blame for the alarming decrease in New England...