Ambient Monitoring for Sinclair and Dyes Inlets, Puget Sound, Washington: Chemical Analyses for 2012 Regional Mussel Watch

Under the Project ENVVEST Final Project Agreement, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PSNS&IMF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), and local stakeholders have worked collaboratively to improve the environmental quality of Sinclair and Dyes Inlets. A regional mussel monitoring program began in 2010 to assess the status and trend of ecological resources, assess the effectiveness of cleanup and pollution control measures, and determine if discharges from all sources are protective of beneficial uses including aquatic life. The program collected indigenous mussels to represent a time-integrated measure of bioavailable metals and organic chemicals present in the water column. This document supplements the 2010 indigenous mussel data with 2012 data to provide two years of data on the chemical residue of mussels present in the inter-tidal regions of Sinclair Inlet, Dyes Inlet, Port Orchard Passage, Rich Passage, Agate Passage, Liberty Bay, and Keyport Lagoon. The 2012 data set added one station at PSNS&IMF and one market samples from Penn Cove. Indigenous mussels were collected from a small boat and/or from along the shoreline, measured, composited, and analyzed for percent lipids, percent moisture, stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, and a suite of trace metals and organic contaminants. The trace metals included silver (Ag), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). The organic contaminants included the list of NOAA Status and Trends 20 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) congeners and suite of parent and methylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The average lengths between the 2010 and 2012 data were generally less than 30% relative percent difference (RPD). Generally, the metals concentrations were lower in 2012 than 2010 with some notable exceptions in Sinclair Inlet and Rich Passage where increases in Ag, Hg, Pb, Cu, and Zn exceeded an RPD of 50% between years. However, they did not exceed the bioaccumulation critical values or the critical body residues corresponding to the no observed effect dose (NOED) and the lowest observed effect dose (LOED) with one exception. The Cd concentrations exceeded the NOED and LOED for the Manchester Lab Pier and the Pike Place Market samples. For the PAHs and PCB, the 2012 data were generally lower than 2010 and some cases significantly lower for PAHs and none of the available invertebrate benchmarks were exceeded