Prince Madog Prize Cruise Report

An integrated marine monitoring workshop onboard the RV Prince Madog November 14-18th 2003

This workshop was organised to assess the contaminant related health status of Cardigan Bay's marine ecosystem. This was achieved by conducting an integrated sea going workshop employing a series of novel molecular, biochemical, chemical, pathological and whole organism endpoints. The workshop brought together leading UK scientists from both academic and end-user communities. In doing so, further developed links between two of the UK's leading marine research institutions (Cefas and PML), along with university departments involved in contaminant-related marine research.

The workshop primarily focused on flatfish populations present in Cardigan Bay, which for reasons yet to be identified display elevated levels of liver pathology relative to prevalences considered to represent a background level of disease. Furthermore, it is hoped the project will provide an integrated overview of the health status of Cardigan Bay, one of the UK's most important marine environments.