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Reconstructing Mercury Trends in Great Lakes Gamefish That Are Complicated by Physical, Biological and Chemical Stressors
Citation:
Lepak, R., S. Janssen, J. Hoffman, M. Gordon, C. Yarnes, J. Ogorek, M. Tate, AND T. Rosera. Reconstructing Mercury Trends in Great Lakes Gamefish That Are Complicated by Physical, Biological and Chemical Stressors. 2022 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Spokane, WA, July 27 - 31, 2022. https://doi.org/10.23645/epacomptox.20492988
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation to the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists July 2022. Interpreting spatial and temporal trends in fish mercury data is often a challenge and these challenges are enhanced when fish habits are not static but evolving due to a wide range stressors. New approaches in isotope ecology have been developed to better estimate fish habits and changes therein which has provided us an opportunity to account for ecological shifts that may impact contaminant results. Here we focus on reconstructing fish-mercury trends in the Great Lakes and highlight our plans to use these advanced tools in isotope ecology to improve our understanding of trends.
Description:
Despite dramatic declines in domestic mercury emissions and the contemporaneous declines in atmospheric mercury concentrations, mercury-fish consumption advisories persist nationally (and some are worsening). This is true even in the Laurentian Great Lakes where mercury concentrations in water are extremely low, rivaling the open ocean. The drivers that decouple reduced mercury emissions from our expected monotonic declines in fish mercury burden are multidimensional (e.g., climate change, invasive species) and often not directly obvious (e.g., bottom-up perturbations, complex physicochemical interactions). These complications dampen our ability to assess the impact of the Minamata Convention, the global nations’ response to curb mercury use, in the U.S. We’ve built an interdisciplinary team of scientists who are equipped to assess the in situ and ex situ controls influencing ecosystem response to complex and continuously changing ecosystems, mercury sources and mercury burdens so that we can better account for the uncertainties that make trend analyses a challenge and future projections, weakened. Here we discuss how new tools in isotope ecology are helping us better understand mercury data on fish from U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes Fish Monitoring and Surveillance Program, which spans nearly 40 years and all five Laurentian Great Lakes.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Reconstructing Mercury Trends in Great Lakes Gamefish That Are Complicated by Physical, Biological and Chemical Stressors
JMIH LEPAK GLS 072522.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 3218.791 KB, about PDF)