A brief ecotoxicology tour of fossil fuel pollution in Puget Sound, guided by salmon and marine forage fish

Fossil fuels, particularly in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), are ubiquitous chemical contaminants throughout Puget Sound freshwater, estuarine, and marine habitats. Environmental pollution involving PAHs reflect societal land uses of the past, present, and future, across multiple management and conservation sectors - e.g., historical industrial pollution, oil spills, and urban stormwater runoff associated with an expanding regional transportation grid.  This presentation will briefly review a few decades of continuous PAH ecotoxicology research by NOAA Fisheries, with an emphasis on the stewardship and restoration of vulnerable habitats for Pacific salmonids and marine forage fish, particularly Pacific herring.  Focal topics will include complex mixture toxicity; converging habitat stressors (particularly interactions with climate-driven thermal stress); sublethal or delayed-in-time effects; biological scaling (genes to populations); novel biomarkers for PAH exposure and response; and the use of models to align empirical research to regional conservation and recovery goals.