About

Project Breathless is a research initiative that brings together ecologists, economists, communications scholars and students to increase understanding of the impacts of low-oxygen conditions on fishes, aquatic food webs and ecosystem services.

The Principal Investigator (PI) is Karin Limburg from the State University of New York College of Environmental Forestry (SUNY ESF) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU-Aqua). Co-PI’s include Roxanne Razavi and Andrea Feldpausch-Parker from SUNY ESF; Anna Gårdmark and Michele Casini from SLU-Aqua and Ben Walther from Texas A & M Corpus Christi. Visit the Research Team page for biographies for all of the Project Breathless collaborators.

Project Breathless takes a comparative approach to increasing understanding of hypoxia impacts across systems by studying fish in the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Lake Erie.

The Baltic and Gulf of Mexico are highly productive marine basins, and Lake Erie is one of the Great Lakes, the world's largest group of freshwater lakes.

All three water bodies experience algal blooms and hypoxic events due to polluted runoff and warming waters.

Trans-Basin comparisons

Baltic Sea

The Baltic is a semi-enclosed sea that separates the Scandinavian Peninsula from the rest of Europe. Nine different countries surround this arm of the Atlantic.

Fish studied are Baltic cod and flounder, as well as the round goby, an invasive species.

Drs. Limburg and Razavi, and SUNY ESF PhD student Hadis Miraly are analyzing earstone, eye lens and tissue samples collected and analyzed by SLU-Aqua's Yvette Heimbrand.

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a coastal basin of the Atlantic Ocean, bounded by Mexico, Cuba and the US Gulf Coast. The study area is Lavaca Bay, part of the Gulf’s Matagorda Bay complex, a highly productive and ecologically important estuary located on the central Texas Coast.

The fish under investigation in Lavaca Bay are red drum, southern flounder and Atlantic croaker.

Dr. Walther and Texas A&M PhD student Jacob Oster, are collecting and analyzing samples.

Lake Erie

Erie is the southernmost of the Great Lakes, bounded by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Fish studied in Lake Erie are the native species yellow perch and walleye, as well as the invasive round goby.

Fish samples are collected in partnership with Ann-Marie Gorman of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Richard Kraus from the United States Geological Survey’s Lake Erie Biological Station.

interdisciplinary Research

Project Breathless employs innovative techniques to expand understanding of hypoxia impacts at multiple scales, from individual fish to food webs and habitats.

Geochemical Biomarkers - chemical analysis of fish earstones using biomarker proxies, such as magnesium and manganese, to quantify individual fish's lifetime exposure to hypoxia.
Ecotoxicology - cutting-edge research aimed at tracking the presence of mercury in fish eye lenses and muscle tissue as part of an effort to explore how low-oxygen conditions promote the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in aquatic food webs.
Food Web & Habitat Impacts - advancing the development of a food web model designed to help quantify hypoxia-induced changes in Baltic food web structure and function. SUNY ESF post-doctoral associate Elizabeth Duskey is conducting the modeling, under the guidance of Drs. Gårdmark and Casini. Jessica Lueders-Dumont, post-doctoral associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Princeton University is using stable isotope analysis of earstone biomarkers to track changes in Baltic cod diets over time.
Ecosystem Services Assessment - Project Breathless seeks to quantify impacts of hypoxia on ecosystem services, comparing changes in habitat use, food webs and trophic transfer of methylmercury across the three different study areas. Collaborators include Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia, Martin Quaas from the University of Leipzig and Martina Stiasny of the Institute of Marine Resources.
Outreach & Communication - students at SUNY ESF are producing outreach materials intended to raise awareness about the growing problem of hypoxia. Collaborators include Andrea Feldpausch-Parker, Silje Kristiansen from SUNY ESF, and Elizabeth LoGiudice from Resilience Communications & Consulting, LLC.

For a deeper dive into Project Breathless, visit our Mission, Research Methods and Publications pages

For more information about hypoxia and deoxyenation in the world's oceans,

visit the UN's Global Ocean Oxygen Network

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