SCRC: PhD: Tracking methyl mercury contamination pathways in key commercially and recreationally fished species.

Funded Activity Summary

This project will analyse methylmercury concentrations within known trophic pathways to i) better establish the risk associated with eating seafood, ii) explain the disparity between environmental and biotic mercury levels and iii) determine the methylmercury contribution to varying trophic levels and thus clarify the relationship between total mercury loadings and bioaccumulation potential.
Human mercury exposure is primarily due to consumption of seafood (Chen et al. 2009), with young children and pregnant women most at risk.
The Derwent estuary is highly contaminated with mercury; with fish levels consistently exceeding FSANZ maximum permitted levels (0.5 mg kg-1). However, the literature is divided as to the source of mercury accumulation in fish; some studies suggest a strong influence from the surrounding water and sediments (Blevins and Pancorbo, 1986; Calta and Canpolat, 2006, Kehrig et al., 2010) whilst other studies suggest environmental levels are a poor indicator (Langlois et al., 1987, Verdouw et al., 2010) and that contamination arises through specific mercury bioaccumulation pathways.
Mercury accumulates in marine food webs as the organic form, methylmercury, which is particularly toxic, persistent and readily biomagnifies (Chen et al., 2009, Ward et al., 2010). Sediment mercury is largely inorganic and, depending on environmental conditions, frequently biologically unavailable (Chen et al., 2009). An important step in determining trophic accumulation and toxicity potential (“mercury budget”) is to establish the methylmercury component at each trophic level. Despite evidence that methylmercury percentages increase with trophic level (Kehrig et al., 2009; Kasper et al., 2009), there is no accurate way of predicting this component without direct measurement (Chen et al., 2008). This project proposes to analyse and document the methylmercury contributions to each of the key fish species listed and describe the influence of life-history, feeding preference, trophic level, and spatial and temporal differences on fish loadings.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-03-2011

End Date: 31-12-2013

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

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ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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