(Table 1) Mercury concentrations and carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios in 14 marine species from West Greenland sampled between 2003-2004

DOI

Total mercury (THg), methylmercury (MeHg) and stable isotopes of nitrogen (d15N) and carbon (d13C) 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 dw) and tissue d15N (per mil) 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 (d15N) discrimination among a broad range of aquatic taxa and underlines the possibility of broad ecosystem comparisons using the combined contaminant and stable isotope approach.

Mercury concentrations are given per kg dry weight. Data extracted in the frame of a joint ICSTI/PANGAEA IPY effort, see http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.150150

Supplement to: Rigét, Frank F; Möller, P; Dietz, Rune; Nielsen, Torkel Gissel; Asmund, Gert; Strand, Jakob; Larsen, Martin M; Hobson, Keith A (2007): Transfer of mercury in the marine food web of West Greenland. Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 9(8), 877-883

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.819064
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1039/b704796g
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.819064
Provenance
Creator Rigét, Frank F; Möller, P ORCID logo; Dietz, Rune; Nielsen, Torkel Gissel (ORCID: 0000-0003-1057-158X); Asmund, Gert; Strand, Jakob ORCID logo; Larsen, Martin M ORCID logo; Hobson, Keith A
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2007
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 277 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-57.500W, 67.000S, -55.000E, 74.000N); West Greenland
Temporal Coverage Begin 2003-04-01T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z