Puget Sound is a large marine ecosystem to which state and federal agencies have initiated an ecosystem-scale management strategy in order to restore and maintain Puget Sounds valuable economic, natural, and cultural resources. The first step to achieving ecosystem-scale management is to perform an Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA), a process that identifies relevant ecosystem indicators and establishes the critical benchmarks for promoting and attaining health and effective restoration to the ecosystem. Aspects of ecosystem indicators pertain to physical, chemical, ecological, and human processes.

In this project, we are investigating the suitability of using somatic growth of a common flatfish (English sole, Parophrys vetulus) as an ecosystem indicator of the physical and chemical environment. For somatic growth to be considered a suitable ecosystem indicator, we are assessing whether there are significant correlations to relevant aspects of the abiotic and biotic environment. Specifically, we are investigating how otolith-derived estimates of somatic growth from sites throughout Puget Sound vary with regards to environment (e.g., water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen) and anthropogenic (e.g., exposure to chemical contaminants) factors. To further understand how growth could act as an ecosystem indicator we are also determining how metabolism and consumption (estimated from a bioenergetics approach) vary under current and projected contaminant loads and climate change scenarios. This bioenergetics approach allows for the determination of a threshold range of values, for environmental and anthropogenic factors, that would produce a detectable response in somatic growth of English sole. Somatic growth, otolith chemistry, and toxilogical data.