Sediments of Presque Isle Bay in Lake Erie have historically high levels of contamination.  We used surface floating pupal exuviae (SFPE) to compare Chironomidae emergence from sample sites in Presque Isle Bay to an adjacent area of Lake Erie with lower sediment contaminant levels.  Identifications to lowest practical level were made using a dissecting microscope, with some specimens consistently identified to species, others to species-groups, and the remaining to genus. The resulting data for 56 taxa were used to calculate an array of metrics for each sample site.  Specimens were then resorted and exuviae were slide mounted to determine the number of species present and metrics were recalculated.  Metrics based on lowest practical level of identification showed good separation of emergence from the two areas and required approximately one-third the time to process.  However, as expected, metrics based on species richness were improved when exuviae were slide mounted and identified.