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Ocean Gems

In 2008, WHOI summer student Lauren Watka held up a dish of jewel-like fish eggs. The little saltmarsh fishes called mummichogs (Fundulus heteroclitus) tolerate varying salinity and pollutant levels, so biologists studying pollutants use them as model organisms for genetic and toxicology studies. Watka, in biologist John Stegeman’s lab, compared developing mummichog eggs from a reference site with those taken from a Superfund site contaminated with toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), to investigate genes activated to produce proteins that help detoxify contaminants.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)