RWU’s Taylor reels in grant for scup research

SOMETHING IN THE WATER: Roger Williams University associate professor of biology David Taylor catches scup north of Dyer Island in Narragansett Bay for research on mercury levels in the popular fish. / COURTESY RWU
SOMETHING IN THE WATER: Roger Williams University associate professor of biology David Taylor catches scup north of Dyer Island in Narragansett Bay for research on mercury levels in the popular fish. / COURTESY RWU

David Taylor has been measuring mercury in fish for the past eight years. The associate professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University targets the main types of fish people catch with a rod and reel and take home to eat.
After all, the more fish people catch, the more they tend to eat, and that’s a critical reason to know the mercury levels in the most commonly caught fish.
This summer, with a $12,000 grant from the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Foundation, Taylor has extended his research already underway on mercury levels in scup, a type of fish frequently caught and consumed locally.
“When I began, I focused on striped bass, bluefish, winter and summer flounder, tautog, which is also called blackfish, and black sea bass,” said Taylor. “I’ve done some detailed analysis and gotten a lot of information on those species. The one that was missing from my data set was scup.”
Taylor filled in that gap over the past couple of years with analysis of mercury levels in scup caught in Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound.
The one-year grant from the anglers foundation awarded in June allowed him to expand that research to scup caught in Narragansett Bay. A substantial amount of that research has been done this summer and the findings relayed to the R.I. Department of Health for use in making consumption advisories.
“The amount of mercury in some fish is enough to impair the development of the nervous system,” said Robert Vanderslice, who heads the Healthy Homes and Environment Team at the R.I. Department of Health. “As adults, the development of our nervous system is complete. Young children and developing fetuses are the most sensitive to mercury’s affects. Pregnant women who eat fish can pass this mercury to their developing baby.”
The results of Taylor’s research on mercury levels in scup are based on scup of legal size, a minimum of 10 inches. “Larger, older fish tend have larger concentrations of mercury than smaller, younger fish,” said Taylor. “Where we run into problems is the fish we consume tend to be larger, older fish. That’s what people target. His research on scup to-date has shown “the percentage of fish with mercury levels that exceed the EPA action level, which is 0.3 parts per million, is relatively low,” said Taylor. “That’s why they’re deemed by the health department as safe to eat.
“The average level of mercury in the vast majority of scup we’ve analyzed is below the EPA action level. The closer you are to 10 inches, the lower the mercury,” said Taylor. “The larger the scup, your exposure to mercury increases. However, most people eat a range of sizes of fish and the EPA action level is based on the average amount of mercury in fish of at least 10 inches.”
Mercury cannot be “cooked out” of fish, according to the state health department website on Mercury Poisoning: About Fish. Mercury can only be found in fish through laboratory analysis.
To collect additional data for his research, Taylor did a survey of the fish-eating habits of 280 recreational anglers and their families using three sources. He distributed the survey at the Galilee Seafood Festival, the New England Saltwater Fishing Show at the R.I. Convention Center in Providence and online using Survey Monkey.
Questions on the survey included how often people ate fish, if the fish were local and if they consumed the seven species of fish, including scup, which make up the vast majority of recreational fish caught by Rhode Islanders.
“These fishermen and their families are consuming quite a bit of fish, significantly higher than the national average,” said Taylor.
While he had assumed local anglers had a high fish-consumption rate, Taylor now has data to back it up.
Taylor’s analysis of tissue samples from scup will continue into early fall. •

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