Bioaccumulation of metallic trace elements and organic pollutants in marine sponges from the South Brittany Coast, France

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the accumulation of metallic and organic pollutants in marine sponges with the oyster Crassostrea gigas used as sentinel species. The concentrations of 12 Metallic Trace Elements (MTEs), 16 Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), 7 PolyChlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), and 3 organotin derivatives were measured in 7 marine sponges collected in the Etel River (South Brittany, France). Results indicated Al, Co, Cr, Fe, Pb, and Ti particularly accumulated in marine sponges such as Hymeniacidon perlevis and Raspailia ramosa at higher levels compared to oysters. At the opposite, Cu and Zn accumulated significantly at higher concentrations in oysters. Among PAHs analyzed, benzo(a)pyrene bioaccumulated in H. perlevis at levels up to 17-fold higher than in oysters. In contrast, PCBs bioaccumulated preferentially in oysters. Significant differences exist in the abilities of marine phyla and sponge species to accumulate organic and metallic pollutants however, among the few sponge species studied, H. perlevis showed impressive bioaccumulation properties. The use of this species as bioindicator and/or bioremediator near shellfish farming areas is also discussed.

Marine sponges as a powerful tool for trace elements biomonitoring studies in coastal environment

“…Mo was seldom included in TEs accumulation studies performed on sponges. Gentric et al (2016) reported Mo sponge concentrations between 0.2 and 1.2 mg kg −1 (similar to those measured in this study), showing a special affinity of this element for the specie H. perlevis comparing to the Raspailia ramosa species. Cd presented the same opposite behavior between sponge and sediment results.…”

“…Depending on the targeted TE, concentrations measured in sponges were from 6 to 145 times higher than those measured in mussels. Gentric et al (2016) reported also higher concentration values of Mo, Ni, and Pb in H. perlevis and R. ramosa collected in Northern France, in comparison with Crassostrea gigas (oyster). On the other hand, this oyster specie showed much higher content of Cu and Zn in comparison with all the sponges species analyzed in the mentioned study.…”

“…Sponges pump large quantities of seawater (100-1200 mL h −1 g −1 ), more than any other marine invertebrates (Olesen and Weeks, 1994). These organisms have a high capacity for TEs accumulation (Patel et al, 1985;Padovan et al, 2012), exhibiting higher filtering capacity than bivalves (Negri et al, 2006;Gentric et al, 2016). They are considered as "biological particle traps" due to their ability to concentrate a wide range of chemicals from both the suspended and dissolved phases of the water, with usually high bioconcentration factors (BCF) (Perez et al, 2005;Cebrian et al, 2003).…”

The Essentials of Marine Biotechnology

“…Among metazoans, sponges have been investigated as a natural bioremediation solution (Fu et al, 2007;Stabili et al, 2008), due to their capacity, as active filter-feeders, to primarily feed on the ultraplankton fraction (less than five microns particle size) of the particulate matter (Pile, 1999), along with dissolved organic matter (de Goeij et al, 2008a,b) in the surrounding seawater. Additionally, sponges -or their microsymbionts -show the capacity to accumulate metallic trace elements, as well as various organic pollutants (Bauvais et al, 2015;Gentric et al, 2015), rendering them prominent candidate bioindicators or bioremediators.…”

Application of in situ Solid-Phase Microextraction on Mediterranean Sponges for Untargeted Exometabolome Screening and Environmental Monitoring

“…As we went through our annotated list of compounds, we observed that the extracted analytes also contained pesticides and drugs, with some of these compounds being present in higher amounts in the sponge experimental groups than the controls. This finding was likely due to the fact that sponges are constantly pumping and taking in large amounts of surrounding seawater, thus accumulating pollutants (Gentric et al, 2016). Among the drugs and bioactive organic chemicals that were extracted, those with potential therapeutic applications included ligustilide (a phthalide), 3-Dimethylallyl-4-hydroxybenzaldehyde (m/z 191.1066…”