Are Jerseys Coastal Fish Free of Harmful Mercury?
by Joanna Burger and Michael Gochfeld In the early morning fog, we drift along slowly, line in the water, waiting. A chill is still in the air, and only the soft sound of the ocean breaks the silence. A few lone Common Terns drift low over the gentle swells, searching, as we are, for elusive schools of Bluefish. Suddenly the terns begin to coalesce into a dense flock, swirling and dipping toward the water. More birds fly out from their nesting colony on the beach. As the flock grows the first terns dive into the water, and emerge with a small fish, which they swallow quickly and then return to their task. Terns dive downward from the thick mass of swirling birds, each successfully plucking a fish from the frantic school swirling at the surface, forced up by a hungry school of Bluefish just below them. We are using the terns as an indicator of where the Bluefish are, and we drift into the surge of boiling baitfish trying to escape the voracious Bluefish below,and hungry terns above. We
