Trends of persistent organic pollutants in American eel (Anguilla rostrata) from eastern Lake Ontario, Canada, and their potential effects on recruitment

Byer, Jonathan D.; Lebeuf, Michel; Trottier, Steve; Raach, Meriem; Alaee, Mehran; Brown, R. Stephen; Backus, Sean; Casselman, John M.; Hodson, Peter V.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.05.054

Cited by 26 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(98 reference statements)

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“…PCBs and DDT production peaked around the 1960s (Harrad et al, 1994;Van Metre, Wilson, Callender, & Fuller, 1998); that is, about 20 years before eels started to decline, and concentrations remain high in river sediments explaining why levels are still high in eels (ICES, 2016). Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) had a dramatic effect on lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in Lake Ontario (Cook et al, 2003) and concentrations peaked in American eel in Lake Ontario in the late 1960s, about 20 years before the American eel recruitment collapse (Byer et al, 2015). The increased nutrient load to water bodies has caused detrimental impacts on humans and aquatic ecosystem health (Grizzetti, Bouraoui, & Aloe, 2012;Grizzetti et al, 2011) and continued to increase until the mid-1990s before declining in many rivers (Minaudo, Meybeck, Moatar, Gassama, & Curie, 2015).…”

Section: Comp Onent 2-in Cre a S Ed Contamination Load: Contaminatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change

Drouineau

Durif

Castonguay³

et al. 2018

Fish and Fisheries

117

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Temperate eels Anguilla anguilla (European eel), A. rostrata (American eel) and A. japonica (Japanese eel) are three catadromous species which have been declining since the 1970s/1980s despite their remarkable adaptive capacity. Because of their specific life cycles, which share distant oceanic spawning grounds and continental growth stage, eels are affected by five components of the global change: (a) climate change affecting larval survival and drift, (b) an increase in pollution leading to high levels of contamination exacerbated by their high lipid levels, (c) increasing fragmentation and habitat loss that reduce dramatically the amount of available habitats and induce increased spawner mortality, (d) the appearance of Anguillicola crassus a parasitic alien nematode that impairs spawning success, and (e) the impact of commercial and recreational fisheries for all life stages of eel. In this context, the rapid increases of pressures during the “Great Acceleration” have surpassed the adaptive capacity of eels. This illustrates that cumulative effects of global change can lead to the collapse of species, even in species that have amazingly high adaptive capacities.

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Section: Comp Onent 2-in Cre a S Ed Contamination Load: Contaminatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change

Drouineau

Durif

Castonguay³

et al. 2018

Fish and Fisheries

117

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“…The lack of dioxin-like toxicity of extracts of Lake Ontario eels captured in 2008 corresponds to exponential declines in TEQ concentrations in Lake Ontario eels (8.7%/yr over 30 yr ;Byer et al 2015). For example, dioxin TEQs measured in eel tissues averaged 3.5 pg/g wet weight in 2008, 4-fold lower than in 1998 and 15-fold lower than estimated for 1980 .…”

Section: Trends In Dlc Contamination In American Eel From Lake Ontariomentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Toxicity of dioxin-like compounds in eel to medaka embryos-Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 2018;37:1061-1070 0.72 to 9.4 pg/g wet weight (Table 2; Byer et al 2015) with a range among individual eels of 0.36 to 40.6 pg/g wet weight, well below the threshold of DLC toxicity to medaka. Concentrations were lowest in eels from the reference sites Rivi ere Sud-Ouest and Margaree River and highest in the positive control eels from the Hudson River and Canal Dessel-Schoten (Belgium).…”

Section: Teqsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dioxin‐like contaminants are no longer a risk to the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) in Lake Ontario

Hoobin¹,

Byer²,

Alaee

et al. 2018

Enviro Toxic and Chemistry

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The embryotoxicity of extracts of American eels (Anguilla rostrata) was measured to determine whether maternally derived contaminants contribute to the declining recruitment of eels to Lake Ontario. Sexually maturing, large yellow and silver eels were sampled in 2007 and 2008 from 5 locations in eastern Canada, including Lake Ontario; positive controls included eels from the Hudson River, United States, and Canal Dessel-Schoten, Belgium (European eel, Anguilla anguilla). Japanese medaka eggs were injected immediately after fertilization with 1 or 10 nL of eel extract and, after 12 d, scored for signs of toxicity. Eel extracts did not cause dioxin-like embryotoxicity, reflecting the low concentrations of total dioxin equivalents measured chemically in these same extracts. Embryo mortality and reduced hatching success at high doses of eel extracts may reflect the bioaccumulation of legacy or emerging chemicals of concern. The results were consistent with long-term trends of declining concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in tissues of eels and other fish species from Lake Ontario, trends of declining embryotoxicity of eel tissue extracts, and recent increases of recruitment of juvenile eels to Lake Ontario. If dioxin-like compounds contributed in the past to the decline of recruitment and abundance of American eels in Lake Ontario, these data suggest that recruitment should recover, following the same trends as the recovery of lake trout reproduction in Lake Ontario. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:1061-1070. © 2017 SETAC.

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“…This issue of adaptation to environmental variability is presently crucial because temperate eels have suffered dramatic collapses (Dekker, 2009;Dekker and Casselman, 2014;Jacoby et al, 2015), and A. anguilla is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN (Jacoby and Gollock, 2014a), while A. rostrata and A. japonica are classified as endangered Jacoby and Gollock, 2014b). Several factors have been proposed to explain these declines (Jacoby et al, 2015), including changes in oceanic conditions (Castonguay et al, 1994), contamination and habitat degradation (Belpaire et al, 2016;Byer et al, 2015), parasitism (Feunteun, 2002;Kirk, 2003), fishing pressure (Dekker, 2003a), fragmentation including massive habitat loss (Kettle et al, 2011), and hydroelectricity-induced mortality (Castonguay et al, 1994). In view of this situation, the European Commission introduced European Regulation N° 1100/2007, imposing a new set of measures designed to reverse the decline.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts that cause the highest direct mortality of individuals do not necessarily have the greatest influence on temperate eel escapement

Mateo

Lambert

Tétard³

et al. 2017

Fisheries Research

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Temperate eels are three panmictic catadromous species with a long period of oceanic passive larval drift and large distribution areas in contrasting environments. Spatial patterns of life history traits have been observed, and are correlated with environmental gradients, and may arise from both adaptive phenotypic plasticity and genetic polymorphism. This raises the question of the effect of spatially heterogeneous anthropogenic pressures on these populations. In this context, we used Geneveel, an individual-based optimization model that includes both phenotypic plasticity and genetic polymorphism, to explore the effects of different kinds of anthropogenic pressures: glass eel and silver eel fisheries, obstacles to upstream migration, and turbine mortality. More specifically, we analyzed the effects of these pressures on five output variables: the number of escapees, the proportion of females, the proportion of slow growers, the mean length-at-silvering and the resulting egg production. Our results suggest that phenotypic plasticity could act as a compensatory mechanism that mitigates the effects of some pressures (glass eel fishery and obstacles to upstream migration) and could be a source of resilience for the population, while other pressures did not show any compensatory effect (silver eel fishery and turbine mortality). Therefore, global impacts are very hard to assess, and the pressure that kills the most individuals does not necessarily have the biggest impact on the spawning biomass.

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Trends of persistent organic pollutants in American eel (Anguilla rostrata) from eastern Lake Ontario, Canada, and their potential effects on recruitment

Cited by 26 publications

References 49 publications

Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change

Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change

Dioxin‐like contaminants are no longer a risk to the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) in Lake Ontario

Impacts that cause the highest direct mortality of individuals do not necessarily have the greatest influence on temperate eel escapement

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