Published By US Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior
Issued over 9 years ago
Summary
Description
For decades, the Nashua River received environmental pollutants from nonpoint and point sources that included industrial entities, municipalities, and military activities. Fort Devens, a former U.S. Army installation and currently a Superfund Site, is divided by the river in Ayer, Massachusetts. Between August 9 and 11, 1994, in a 2.5mile section of the Nashua River that included two Fort Devens waste disposal sites and a former sewage disposal plant, USFWS personnel used electrofishing methods and trot lines to collect 43 fish from three trophic levels. Organochlorine and trace element concentrations were determined by USFWS contract analytical laboratories in 52 tissue samples 28 fillet and 15 composite carcass samples body minus fillet of largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides, brown bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus, and yellow bullhead Ameiurus natalis, and 9 wholebody composite samples of yellow perch Perca flavescens. Fillet and carcass data of bass and bullhead were combined to estimate wholebody concentrations.