Abstract

On the morning of August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the northern Gulf Coast near New Orleans, Louisiana as a category 4 hurricane. The high winds and storm surge resulted in massive flooding in the city of New Orleans and adjacent areas. Flood waters trapped in the city became contaminated due to sewage, chemical and gas leakage from submerged homes, businesses, vehicles and gas stations. Some portion of the excess water west of the Mississippi River was manually pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, where it then flowed into Lake Borgne and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. East of the river, a much larger amount of the excess water either flowed naturally or was pumped over levees into surrounding marshes in the Barataria Basin finally reaching the Gulf of Mexico. To test if these contaminants were incorporated into otoliths, juvenile red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, were collected from around the Mississippi River mouth, east and west of the river, and off the coast of Texas. The otoliths were tested for trace metals, with particular interest in high concentrations of Pb, Cu, Cd, and Zn, which were elevated in the samples taken when the water was still in New Orleans. Upon preliminary analysis, it was discovered that each of these metals were significantly higher from samples collected west of the river than east of the river. Further experiments need to be conducted to test if this is a valid Katrina elemental fingerprint

PDF Preview