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The Tar Ponds: Finding Life in the Strangest Places

Not many of us would consider the tar ponds as a great place to do research but Dr. Martha Jones is finding it to be just that.  Despite that fact that the Sydney Tar Ponds has been heavily contaminated from one hundred years of former industrial activities associated with steel production, as well as municipal waste and sewage, Dr. Jones and her team of student researchers are finding out that it is not barren and lifeless after all.  In fact, various species have been sampled, including American eel, European green crab, grass shrimp, brown bullhead catfish, sticklebacks, tomcod, banded killifish, and the most abundant species is the mummichog.
In order to assess the health of species in the Tar Ponds, Dr. Jones’s team compares the health of species like mummichogs with those from relatively healthy estuaries.  They compare length-weight relationships, percentage of bone deformities and abnormalities, body asymmetries and age and growth rates of fish from the reference estuary with those from the Tar Ponds.  As she points out, “the primary objective is to establish suitable, reliable, and locally relevant indicators of ecosystem health so we can assess the effectiveness of the remediation project.” In an area where science and pseudo-science have often collided and the community has struggled with how to deal with the presence of such a toxic site in its citizenry’s backyard.
In a related study this past summer, Dr. Jones and her students conducted a mark-recapture study with the invasive European green crab to look at their movements throughout the Tar Ponds and into Sydney Harbour.  This study, part of Project U.F.O. (Unidentified Foreign Organisms), is a collaborative initiative between Dr. Martha Jones of Cape Breton University and Atlantic Coastal Action Program-Cape Breton to increase public awareness about the invasive aquatic species that threaten our regional aquatic ecosystems. Invasive species often do their damage very quickly and in environments that pose little threat to them, they can increase quite rapidly.  The primary objectives of Project U. F. O. are to better understand the status of invasive species in Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) and to inform aquatic stakeholders about the best ways to prevent the introduction or spread of these alien invaders. As already noted, even the Tar Ponds can host the newcomers.  Invasive species that Dr. Jones’ team is already monitoring or on the look out for include creatures that with names that sound like they came out of a science fiction or horror movie.  Who could believe we have a species named “rock snot”?  Other species include such intriguing or notorious creatures as the European green crab, Asian shore crab, Chinese mitten crab, lacy crust bryozoan, various sea squirts, oyster thief or dead man’s fingers, and spinycheek crayfish.  Through the work of Dr. Jones and her team, the Tar Ponds is revealing secrets that will help us not only to better understand the impact of the health of an ecosystem on those that inhabit it but also to increase awareness of the impact of the inhabitants on those same systems.