Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Science. Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 867 Lakeshore Rd. P.O. Box 5050 Burlington, Ontario L7R 4A6

^*Corresponding author: E-mail munawarm@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Abstract

  The assessment of aquatic ecosystem health is now a standard and integrated way of analysing the state of an ecosystem (Cairns, 1992; Munawar et al., 1989,1992,1993), as compared to the routine and piecemeal monitoring of physico-chemical and biological parameters. In-depth biological assessment incorporating structural and functional evaluations is generally lacking. An ecosystemic approach with a systematic inventory of the entire biotic community is required. Information is also needed about the trophic and environmental interactions and the resulting impact on the food-web dynamics. These data then need to be integrated with other variables such as physical, chemical, and human health risk. Until new integrated methods are available the environmentalists will have to adopt existing chemical, biological, ecological, toxicological and biochemical techniques to assess ecosystem health.
Our study is integrated in which various structural and functional parameters have been used which are biologically based. Perhaps this is the first time that this kind of research has been carried out to evaluate the ecosystem health of a Canadian marine protected area. Marine conservation areas are part of a family of protected areas administered to by the Federal Government of Canada to conserve and commemorate the country's natural and cultural heritage. The overall objective of the National Marine Conservation Areas Program of the Government is to protect and conserve for all times national marine areas of Canadian significance such as Fathom Five National Marine Park that are representative of the country's ocean environments and the Great Lakes. As a part of this policy of conserving protected areas the present study was undertaken to generate baseline research information for future comparisons. The structural assessment of the aquatic ecosystem must begin in an integrated fashion at lower trophic levels such as the components of the microbial food-web (bacteria, picoplankton, heterotrophic nanoflagellates, ciliates), phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthos. Microbes have already been reported to be sensitive organisms to anthropogenic stress. For example the autotrophic picoplankton have been found to be sensitive to contaminants in the North American Great Lakes (Munawar and Weisse, 1989; Munawar et al. 1994, 1995). Also the ciliates are increasingly being recognized as significant elements of the microbial food web (e.g., Bernard and Rassoulzadegan, 1990; Pierce and Turner, 1992; Porter et al., 1985) and good indicators of water quality and saprobity (Sladecek, 1973; Lynn and Gilron, 1992). Similarly phytoplankton have are also used extensively as reliable indicators of trophic status and anthropogenic stress. There is a vast amount of information available concerning phytoplankton as indicators of trophic status in the North American Great Lakes (Stoermer, 1978; Muanwar & Munawar, 1986; 1996; 2000). Zooplankton especially crustaceans and rotifers have been utilized as indicator of Water quality (Gannon & Stemberger, 1978). Benthic invertebrates have also been used to assess environmental quality. Community types have been classified according to environmental requirements (Brundin 1958) and indices have been developed to compare communities (Margalef 1958; Milbrink 1983).
This chapter presents assessment of water as well as sediment quality. As indicated above the structural assessment consisted of microbial loop parameters (bacteria, autotrophic picoplankton, heterotrophic nanoflagellates, ciliates), phytoplankton, and benthos collected during 1994. However the zooplankton sampling was not done in 1994 but instead the data was collected during 1997. The functional assessment by means of Size-fractionated primary productivity was carried out in1994. The bioassessment of sediment toxicity was conducted experimentally in 1996 by the application of Microtox and Hyalella assays (Munawar et al. 1989).