Assessment of Population, Reproductive, and Health Impairments in Colonial Waterbirds Breeding in Michigan's Areas of Concern and Associated Screening Water and Sediment for Contaminants of Emerging Concern

This program will provide assistance to an institution to investigate and monitor of the effects of environmental contaminants on the breeding population numbers, reproduction, and immunological health of fish eating birds found in the Saginaw Bay, Raisin River and other Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOCs), building on previous investigations in past years. To accomplish this goal, the recipient institution will collect new data to evaluate the status of fish eating bird population health relative to reference (non AOC) areas and to these same areas as measured in the past. The recipient institution must have a proven record of experience in working with these types of bird colonies in the Great Lakes and measuring specific immunological endpoints in order to maintain scientific integrity and comparability of data. In addition to the continuing work on colonial waterbird populations, reproduction, and immune function, the recipient institution will measure the same endpoints at an additional site (Bellow Island), evaluate potential influence of contaminants of emerging concern to those endpoints, and screen water and sediments samples for these contaminants in the studied watersheds. This is a notice of intent to award a single source grant without competition to Calvin College with Dr. Keith Grasman working on the project under justification 505DM 2.14B (2) & (4). The Service intends to award to this recipient without competition because Dr. Grasman is uniquely qualified to perform this study. He is the researcher that has demonstrated the associations between PCBs and suppression of T-cell-mediated immunity in herring gull and Caspian tern chicks at highly contaminated sites in the Great Lakes as well as associations with altered antibody-mediated immunity (Grasman et al. 1996. Grasman and Fox 2001, Grasman et al. 2012). Because Dr. Grasman has developed and used these immunological methods at these study sites over the past 20 years, data that he generates under this grant can be directly compared with past data to determine trends and restoration of Beneficial Use Impairments.