| MMS ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES PROGRAM: ONGOING STUDIES | ||||||
| MMS OCS Region: | Alaska | |||||
| Title: | Alaska Marine Mammal Health and Contaminants Website | |||||
| Total Cost: | Period of Performance: | FY 2002-2003 | ||||
| Conducting Organization: | ||||||
| MMS Contact: | ||||||
| Description: | ||||||
| Background The Alaska Marine Mammal Tissue Archival Project (AMMTAP) was funded by Minerals Management Service (MMS) in 1987 as part of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program. Initial AMMTAP objectives were to develop methods for field sampling and long-term storage of frozen tissues (under optimal environmental conditions). This study, now conducted for MMS by the US Geological Survey (USGS) Biological Resources Division (BRD), in cooperation with the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, became the model for a nation-wide tissue archival. Analysis of tissue aliquots, a routine quality-control measure at AMMTAP, provides a wealth of information on potential contaminants but this information is not digitally available to management agencies and subsistence villagers. The proposed website would also include "hot-keys" that link with other Alaskan data repositories, thus facilitating rapid access by users to synoptic analytical data on marine mammal tissues. Such repositories include those maintained by the Native Science Commission on Alaska subsistence species and the Alaska Frozen Tissue Collection (AFTC). Once established, a website for AMMTAP data would be coordinated with regional (SynCon), national, (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry), and international (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) contaminant and health-related projects and would be maintained through existing AMMTAP funding. | ||||||
| Objectives The primary goal is to enhance the availability of published and unpublished data on Alaskan marine mammal tissues for more immediate use by scientists and subsistence hunters. | ||||||
| Methods | ||||||
| Importance to MMS Questions about how oil-and-gas drilling and petroleum may potentially affect animal health, environmental contaminant loads, and the safety of consuming subsistence species are of vital importance to MMS and its constituents. The study provides readily accessible information on contaminant analyses directly to subsistence-hunting villages and other users. | ||||||
| Current Status: This project is
currently being processed for procurement in FY 2002. |
||||||
| Final Report Due: | ||||||
| Publications: | ||||||
| Affiliated WWW Sites: | ||||||
| Revised date: | March 2002 | |||||
| ESPIS |
ESPIS - All completed
ESP Studies: |
|||||