Sources and fate of methylmercury in the Southern Ocean : use of model seabirds and mercury stable isotopes

• Main Author: Renedo Elizalde, Marina
• Other Authors: La Rochelle, Amouroux, David, Bustamante, Paco
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Mercure; Oiseaux marins; Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises; Spéciation; Isotopes stables; Écologie; Transfert trophique; Biogéochimie; Mercury; Seabirds; Southern Antarctic Territories; Stable isotopes; Ecology; Trophic transfer; Biogeochemistry; envir; geo; Antarctic; Austral; Indian; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; Antarctique*
• Online Access: http://www.theses.fr/2017LAROS031/document

Despite their distance from industrial pressure, marine southern and Antarctic environments are contaminated by worldwide distributed pollutants, such as mercury (Hg), through atmospheric transport and oceanic currents. So far, Hg contamination pathways in the Southern Ocean remains poorly understood, particularly in the Indian sector, and new studies are required to elucidate its fate and impact in these regions. Seabirds, as top predators of marine food webs, are exposed to elevated concentrations of biomagnified methylmercury (MeHg) via dietary intake and moreover, they forage in the different marine compartments both in spatial and depth terms. Therefore, they are considered as effective bioindicators of Hg environmental contamination and the good knowledge of their ecological characteristics permits their application for tracing Hg in such remote environments otherwise of difficult access. The main objective of this doctoral work is the characterization of the exposure pathways of the MeHg accumulated in model seabirds and the identification of the processes involved in the Hg biogeochemical cycle in the Southern Ocean (from Antarctic to subtropical waters). The proposed methodological approach consisted on the combination of Hg isotopic composition and Hg speciation in tissues of a precise selection of seabirds of the Southern Ocean. In a first step, the evaluation of tissue-specific Hg isotopic signatures was accomplished notably in blood and feathers, as they can be non-lethally sampled. In chicks, both tissues can be effectively and indifferently used for biomonitoring of local contamination using Hg isotopes, whereas in adults each tissue provides access to different temporal exposure : blood at recent scale (i.e. exposure during the breeding period) and feathers at annual scale, thus providing complementary isotopic information at the different stages of seabird annual cycle. A second part was focused on the exploration of MeHg sources in four penguin species within a same subantarctic location, the ...