Developing programs to ensure seafood safety and enhance human health

by Dr. Tracy K. Collier, Director of the Environmental Conservation Division of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, USA.

APC ? seminar: Monday October 20th at 14:15 in H185 at the Department of Animal and Aquacultural Science, UMB.The lecture will last about 1 hour.

As Director of ECD, Dr. Tracy Collier supervises a research enterprise comprised of approximately 80 scientists. The Division contains four research programs, namely Watershed Processes, Ecotoxicology, Environmental Chemistry, and Marine Biotoxins. ECD has a long history in responding to environmental disasters, such as the EXXON Valdez and North Cape oil spills, and the hurricane Katrina with the following pumping of contaminated floodwater from New Orleans back into the nearshore ecosystem. ECO is also involved in assessing the impacts of human activities on marine mammals, and uses analytical chemistry (stable isotopes, fatty acid rations, and chemical contaminant fingerprinting) to better understand life history traits of marine mammals.

Dr. Collier received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington College of Fisheries in 1976, 1978, and 1988, respectively. His research interests over the years have covered some of the first work on metabolism of PAHs by fish, studies of the impacts of oil spills on marine fish and mammals, the enzymology of carcinogen activation and detoxication, and assessing overall effects of contaminants on fish populations through the use of field investigations. His current personal research interests are in the area of environmental toxicology, field investigations of causality, the use of marine mammals as sentinel species for assessing oceans and human health, and the ecological sequelae resulting from exposure to sublethal levels of chemical contaminants.