Potential adverse effects of inorganic pollutants on clinical parameters of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta): Results from a nesting colony from Cape Verde, West Africa

Metals and metalloids in whole blood and tissues of Olive Ridley turtles ( Lepidochelys olivacea ) from La Escobilla Beach (Oaxaca, Mexico)

“…According to Páez-Osuna et al (2010a), their use in biomonitoring marine pollution by metals can give valuable information about the quality of the water they inhabit, which is of great importance in the risk assessment of vulnerable or endangered species. Thus, several authors have shown that concentrations of inorganic elements vary in sea turtles due to their environment and their specific feeding habits, as there are herbivorous, omnivorous and carnivorous species (Torrent et al, 2004;Páez-Osuna et al, 2010a andPáez-Osuna et al, 2010b;Ley-Quiñónez et al, 2011;Camacho et al, 2013;Carneiro da Silva et al, 2013). With this in mind, and because there are not many papers published on L. olivacea, we compared our results with Caretta caretta and Lepidochelys kempii (Tables 5-7) as these species have some similarities in their eating habits with L. olivacea, sharing an analogous position in the food chain.…”

“…Biomonitoring of long-living species has become an important tool in biotoxicology because it can serve both to provide baseline measurements for further studies into the health status of this population and to increase knowledge about the pollution levels in the areas where these turtles live. Furthermore, data regarding those contaminants are scarce and widely dispersed across the world, taken in regions such as Australia (Gordon et al, 1998), US (Aguirre et al, 1994;Homer et al, 2000;Perrault et al, 2011), Japan Sakai et al, 2000), UK (Godley et al, 1998), Mediterranean Coast (Storelli et al, 1998 andStorelli et al, 2005;Godley et al, 1999;Storelli and Marcotrigiano, 2003;Franzellitti et al, 2004;Kaska et al, 2004;Maffuci et al, 2005;García-Fernández et al, 2009;Jerez et al, 2010), African Atlantic (Torrent et al, 2004;Camacho et al, 2013) and Brazil (Carneiro da Silva et al, 2013).…”

“…There are other trace pollutant elements, however, such as Cu, Mn, Ni, Se, and Zn, which play essential roles in tissue metabolism and growth, but their negative effects on sea turtles are still not well understood (Camacho et al, 2013). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the concentrations of Pb, Cd, Cu, Zn, Mn, Se, Ni and As in Olive Ridley turtles from EB, using blood samples as well as the tissues of dead turtles to establish the levels of these elements.…”

The current state and future directions of marine turtle toxicology research

“…The majority of these publications investigated health parameters in blood (n = 7, 47%). Of these, four publications drew correlations between blood parameters and metal concentrations (Day et al, 2007;Innis et al, 2008;Komoroske et al, 2011;Camacho et al, 2013b), while four Table 2 Number of toxicity studies organised by marine turtle species and sub-category of toxicological research. Some publications were counted more than once as they included more than one species or research sub-category.…”

“…For example, some of these studies (Camacho et al, 2013a(Camacho et al, , 2013b have been done on nesting turtles. Nesting females do not feed and instead rely on fat stores which can decrease body condition and influence biochemistry (Plot et al, 2013;Vieira et al, 2014).…”