Aquatic Environmental Quality: Problems and Proposals

An overview was prepared of research and monitoring of aquatic environmental quality by federal and provincial agencies, the university, and private sectors. The overall effort in Canada was found to be unbalanced. Areas of strength were monitoring of water quantity, chemical water quality, and fish physiology–toxicology. Areas of weakness were the use of organisms and the use of whole systems as indicators of environmental quality. The amount of innovation was modest, due in part to the underutilization of the university community. In some areas of monitoring, data interpretation lags seriously behind data collection. A number of constraints now exist to our understanding of the source, distribution, and life expectancy of toxic substances in our environment, and these are discussed in relation to mercury. Specific problems of aquatic environmental quality are discussed by economic sector.