Exploring The Sound:
    Researching Long Island Sound's Living Organisms

     Wesleyan Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Ellen Thomas started her career at the University of Utrecht in Holland, and has completed research all over the world. Along with her husband Johann Varekamp, who also teaches at Wesleyan, the two have integrated their research careers, which most recently have brought them to the depths of Long Island Sound.  According to Professor Thomas, their options for possible  research projects are limited by the demands of synthesizing projects that include her husband. Long Island sound is not only close but also a good location for her work with microfossils.

     Thomas, who earned her undergraduate and  Masters degrees at the University of Utrecht, earned her PhD studying microfossils in Utrecht as well. In 1979 her research brought her to the United States, along with her husband, who had earned his PhD. from the same school, studying volcanoes in Italy.
 Thomas attributes some of the direction that her research has followed to the fact that she had to ìdeal with a career marriage.î She and Varekamp had to find projects that included both of their interests and fields of study. She admits that ìserendipityî also contributed to what she studied.

    While studying air pollution particles in the 1980s, Mt. St. Helens erupted and the two were able to work jointly on a project studying the particles that came out of the volcano. Thomas was then offered a job at Scripps Oceanic Institution in San Diego, working for the International Ocean Drilling Program. Thomas, a staff scientist, would go on cruises and direct the work of other scientists. This job allowed time for outside research while giving her a chance to study microfossils and deep ocean organisms . This research included, according to Thomas,  ìthe history of the organisms living on the floor of the deep ocean over the last forty million yearsî, which can help explain the processes of global change.
 
    Thomasís most recent work in Long Island Sound has evolved from her work on the cruises that set out from the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. She says that microfossils as well as organisms living on the ocean floor can be very helpful in explaining changes that occur in the environment. In her latest paper, entitled, ìBenthic Foramanifera and Environmental Changes in Long Island Soundî Thomas and her colleagues study the effects of pollution and salinity on the micro-organisms in Long Island Sound. Thomas, in collaboration with her husband professor Varekamp, and three other scientists published the paper this past March in The Journal of Coastal Research.  The project, which included researchers from Wesleyan and the Center for Coastal and Marine Geology in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, used two other studies to compare data. The group used a study completed by Parker in 1952 and one conducted by Buzas in 1965 to compare data to their own findings.

     According to the study, Benthic Foraminiferal Fauna, microorganisms that live in the ocean, were of low diversity in Long Island Sound in the 1940s and 1960s. Species of the Genus Elphidium dominated, especially Elphidium excavatum. Buccellas frigida and Eggerella advena,  two other species not in the Elphidium genus were also present. The scientists also concluded from faunas collected in 1996 and 1997 that there was ìa strong decrease in relative abundance of Eggerella advena over all LIS, an increase in relative abundance of Amonia Becarii (another species of Foraminiferal Fauna) in western LIS, and a decrease in species diversity.

     This is very important, according to Thomas, for many reasons. First, Foraminiferal Fauna are very important because if changes occur among them, since they are so low on the food chain, these changes would affect every organism above them. Also, changes like a decrease in species diversity, are indicators of the effects of pollution. Long Island Sound is very susceptible to pollution because it begins, in the west, as the basin for New Yorkí s harbor. For many years, one of the worlds largest cities, New York, has deposited its organic and inorganic waste in Long Island sound. Many rivers that run through large metropolitan areas  in Connecticut also empty in the Sound.  According to the scientists, environmental stress typically causes decreases in diversity. Moreover, data from Oxygen Isotopes suggest that changes in salinity was not the probable cause.

     The study concludes that there is a good chance that pollution contributed to the changes that their data indicates. Changes in the composition of phytoplankton caused by varying levels of anoxia and hypoxia may have contributed to a decrease in biodiversity. The study also concluded that the increase in Amonia Becarii may have been caused by an increase in algal blooms in the western part of Long Island Sound. The increase in algae in this part of the sound was probably caused by sewage put into the sound. Sewage contains large amounts of Nitrogen and Phosphorus, which serve as fertilizers for algal growth.

     Professor Thomasís research is very important, especially to students at Wesleyan. Long Island Sound is a very important waterway to all of Southern Connecticut, Long Island and New York City. Many students here at Wesleyan come from these parts of the country. Thomasís study of small organisms at the bottom of the food chain is also important because these organisms affect all living things. As professor Thomas told me, Long Island sound is starting to show some visible signs of how so much pollution has affected it. Beaches are being shut down and the  fishing industry has been struggling with the effects of anoxia and hypoxia caused by sewage disposal.  Professor Thomas and her husband have also studied the coastal marshes in Southern Connecticut along with graduate students here at Wesleyan.