Transfer of mercury in the marine food web of West Greenland

Abstract

Total mercury (THg), methylmercury (MeHg) and stable isotopes of nitrogen (delta(15)N) and carbon (delta(13)C) were measured in three invertebrate, five fish, three seabird and three marine mammal species of central West Greenland to investigate trophic transfer of mercury in this Arctic marine food web. The food web magnification factor (FWMF) estimated as the slope of the regression between the natural logarithm of THg or MeHg concentrations (mg kg(-1) dw) and tissue delta(15)N ( per thousand) was estimated to 0.183 (SE = 0.052) for THg and 0.339 (SE = 0.075) for MeHg. The FWMFs were not only comparable with those reported for other Arctic marine food webs but also with quite different food webs such as freshwater lakes in the sub-Arctic, East Africa and Papua New Guinea. This suggests similar mechanisms of mercury assimilation and isotopic (delta(15)N) discrimination among a broad range of aquatic taxa and underlines the possibility of broad ecosystem comparisons using the combined contaminant and stable isotope approach.

Biomagnification of mercury through the food web of the Santos continental shelf, subtropical Brazil

“…As a whole, the biota of the Santos shelf had low Hg concentrations, comparable with values reported for the same species from the Rio de Janeiro coast (Bisi et al 2012, Di Beneditto et al 2012, Kehrig et al 2013) and with species from others regions of the world (Prudente et al 1997, Bargagli et al 1998, Anan et al 2005, Rigét et al 2007, Ikemoto et al 2008, Lavoie et al 2010. Based on the assumption that marine fish are made up of 60−80% water (Ciancio et al 2007, Eder & Lewis 2005, Ikemoto et al 2008) and the fact that our data are based on dry weight, the Hg concentrations of the 23 species analysed were under the set limit of 0.5 µg g −1 wet weight (approximately 1.67 µg g −1 dry weight, assuming 70% water) for safe fish consumption (WHO 1976, ANVISA 1998.…”

The fate of mercury in Arctic terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, a review

“…[144][145][146] A study using d 15 N to infer the trophic positions of species [145] reported log concentration-d 15 [146] as well as in food webs along the west coast of Greenland that had log concentration-d 15 N relationship slopes of 0.18 and 0.34 for THg and MeHg. [167] Regression slopes of these Arctic marine examples were noted to be remarkably similar to others in different systems regardless of productivity, latitude or salinity. [145] Because only MeHg is biomagnified, the fraction of MeHg increases progressively with trophic level, typically reaching over 90 % of THg in the muscle tissues of predatory fish and other high trophic level species (Fig.…”

Mercury Biomagnification Through a Coral Reef Ecosystem

“…In their early review of the literature, Riget et al (2007) noted the similarity in estimates of biomagnification efficiency among different ecosystems despite natural variability and differences among studies. This led some authors to suggest that spatial variation observed in bioaccumulated Hg may largely be a result of variability in the amount of MeHg entering the base of the food web (Riget et al 2007;Chasar et al 2009).…”

“…Ideally, trophic transfer studies should be based on whole-body concentration rather than just muscle tissue; however, attempting to obtain a representative sample from grinding up and homogenizing large game fish (which sometimes exceeded 130 cm and 14 kg in the present study) is somewhat impractical. Previous studies have combined Hg data from whole-body and muscle tissues (Riget et al 2007;Chumchal et al 2011;Karimi et al 2013;Thera and Rumbold 2014;Rumbold et al 2018). The present study opted for internal consistency and analyzed only muscle tissue.…”