Abstract
Tale of Tails - Tracking Contaminants in Lobster
Track: Teaching with GIS Across the Curriculum
Authors: Yeprem Chavdarian, Steven Kechichian
The purpose of this study was to determine if contaminants exist in lobster. Our data dealt with contamination levels associated with specific geographic locations. ArcGIS helped us present our findings clearly. We did a classification by weighted average to show the different types of contamination by location and weight. We used HAZUS-MH to generate stream networks showing the routes that sewer pipes take toward the ocean. Ten tails from Los Angeles County and the Channel Islands and twelve from East Canada, Nicaragua, West Australia and South Africa were tested. We found levels of arsenic in Southern California lobster tails that exceeded the safe minimum daily consumption of arsenic (0.005 ppm) ATSDR guidelines for the safe minimum daily consumption of arsenic. People can benefit from this information by knowing, the risk that is associated by consuming lobster from the different locations and choosing the least contaminated source based on our findings.