IAP-24-093

Exploring the impact of pollution on coastal marine environments in NE England

The NE coast of England, and Durham in particular, has suffered many decades of coastal pollution due to the impacts of early industrialisation, coal mining and petro-chemical industries. This is despite being of international geological importance and nationally significant with respect to coastal habitats and fisheries (RAMSARS, SSSIs, and SAMs).
This project will assess and investigate pollutant archives trapped within several coastal sedimentary depo-centres to establish baseline post-industrial toxic substances. The archives will include: pre-industrial saltmarsh sediments; estuarine sediments; sediments related to coal mining waste; ; offshore sediment dumps and offshore sediment cores that predate industrial activity.. This range of sites will provide a first assessment of the coastal pollutant history of the NE coast.

To complement the geochemical analyses of the sediments, the project will also utilise metabolomic-based techniques to look at the acute and chronic responses of key biological species. By looking directly at how indicator species are allocating their metabolic resources, we aim to explore the inter-relationships that tie together marine species and pollutant presence/levels. Metabolomic techniques will be used to look specifically at how coastal macroalgae (seaweeds) communities have responded to recent sediment translocation events in shallow marine and estuarine settings.

Progress during the studentship will build towards three main goals:
a. To sample a range of coastal sedimentary archives and to establish the geochemical characteristics of the sediments.
b. To describe metabolome in at least two key brown seaweed indicator genera: the perennial wracks (Fucus spp.) and the annual kelps (Laminaria spp.).
c. To create digital models of macroalgal metabolism, which will incorporate their responses to xenobiotics (e.g. pollutants, heavy metals) to allow them to be used as baselines

Marine and coastal ecosystems are increasingly under economic pressure, so this studentship represents a clear opportunity for the UK to lead excellence in this area working with the CASE partner, Fishmongers. More broadly, the proposal addresses two of NERC’s Priority Areas (‘Environmental Solutions‘ and ‘Resilient Environment’).

Marine habitat response to changes in sediment flux and pollutant translocation are hard to predict and the earliest warnings of rapid system response come from coastal end-users. For that reason, we have made this studentship a CASE partnership with The Fishmongers’ Company’s Fisheries Charitable Trust. Our CASE partner will allow us to monitor and track the onset of habitat response and mortality events and arrange field access to affected areas. In addition, the baseline collection of sediment and seaweed samples will be aided by our link with the North East Fishing Collective as end users. Their involvement will allow us to core the seafloor and harvest kelp samples using an underwater drone along the north east coastline that would otherwise be inaccessible by shore sampling.

Our methodology will therefore involve:
1. Sediment collection (Supervisors 1, 3): with support from the FishMongers’; NE Fishing collective): Fieldwork will involve onshore and offshore work to retrieve sediment samples and cores from the Durham coast.
2. Sediment analysis (Supervisors 1, 3): Sediment cores will be scanned using a Geotek MSCL and CT scanner to establish the physical and sedimentological properties of the sediment. Geochemical analysis of the sediments will involve XRF and XRD analysis to assess elemental and compound signatures within the sediments and toxins within them. Metal analysis will also be executed using ICP-Mass Spec and coupled to an ecotox AI platform to reconstruct the ecotoxicology risk of the sediments. Stable isotope analysis of the sediment and seaweed will be used to characterise organic carbon and nitrogen sources.
3. Metabolomic data collection (Supervisor 2, 4): Chemical analytical techniques (GC-MS, fractionation and NMR) will be used to describe acute and chronic (e.g. cell walls) metabolite levels in seaweed indicator species.
4. Radiocarbon and Pb210 dating (Supervisor 1, 3): Geochronometric techniques will be used to establish a chronology for the relevant type sites from pre-industrial through to the modern era. Saltmarsh sediments from the Tees estuary will be pivotal to this as they capture a long-term record of estuarine deposition and pollutant flux. Establishing a pollutant ‘event stratigraphy’ will contextualise recent changes in coastal sedimentation patterns.
5. Transcriptome level seaweed response to pollutants (Supervisor 4). Using high throughput RNAseq for wild and experimental samples, changes in gene expression will be quantified, relative to the presence and absence of certain conditions driving the change. Transcriptomic detail will determine if pollutants and environmental conditions are resulting stress or immunological responses in seaweed.

Year 1

Months 1-12: Induction and training – introduction to coastal sedimentary processes and seaweed ecology. Short placement at Fishmongers’ Hall in London (= CASE partner HQ). Field sampling along the Durham Coast. Start of sediment logging and core scanning using a Geotek MSCL and CT scanner to establish the physical and sedimentological properties of the sediment.

Year 2

Months 13-24: Start geochemical analysis of the sediments including XRF, XRD and ICP-Mass Spec and coupled to an ecotox AI platform to reconstruct the ecotoxicology risk of the sediments. Metabolite analysis of field-collected samples and transcriptomic analysis of seaweeds from heavy-low impacted areas to compare expression profiles…

Year 3

Months 25-36: Creation of metabolic models to describe metabolomic data. Creation of metabolic metrics to diagnose environmental stressors. Metabolic data will be compared to available gene expression profiles to see if biosynthetic pathways are affected by pollutants and other conditions.

Year 3.5

Months 37-42: Final analysis – Writing up. Manuscript submissions.

The student will be fully trained in a range of sedimentological (Geotek MSCL and CT Scanner) geochemical (XRF, XRD, ICP-MA, IRMS), environmental (sampling, coring, boat work), biochemical (GC-MS, NMR) and computational techniques (R coding, bioinformatics), which will be delivered supervisors as needed; an indicative timeline is given above. The student will attend external training courses when necessary (e.g. computational biology, expression profiling, data visualization, Python coding).

This studentship proposal forms part of a concerted ongoing effort across several northeast Universities. The student will be involved from the start in work with a clear real-world application. All supervisors have strong links to industry and community contacts.

Finally, we note that our CASE placement will develop the student’s knowledge and skills in three of the Fishmongers’ Company’s four thematic strands, all of which give critical understanding of the UK’s marine resources:
• Marine fish, fisheries and environmental management
• The sustainable and innovative development of aquaculture
• Supporting and developing the fish trade