Trace metals in Antarctic organisms and the development of circumpolar biomonitoring networks

• Main Author: BARGAGLI, R.
• Other Authors: Bargagli, R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Victoria Land; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11365/6376; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0161-5_2

Our present knowledge of Antarctic ecosystems is probably still insufficient to interpret and monitor early ecologically significant effects of climate change and local or remote human activities. With regard to metals of toxicological and environmental concern, available data from snow samples indicate that their biogeochemical cycle only changed in restricted areas (within a few hundred meters or a few kilometers of human settlements). Only Pb and perhaps Cu show some perceptible indication of large-scale alterations caused by anthropogenic emissions in Antarctica and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. In any case, the Antarctic continent and surrounding Southern Ocean are in relatively pristine environmental condition. It has therefore been supposed for many years that because Antarctic organisms evolved in isolation, they were not exposed to and were not adapted to cope with enhanced bioavailability of toxic metals in their environment. Data summarized in this review seem to deny this supposition, showing widespread accumulation of two of the most toxic metals (Hg and Cd) in marine organisms (benthic and pelagic) and cryptogams from icefree areas of Victoria Land. There have been few studies on the ecotoxicology of metals in Antarctic organisms, but available data provide no evidence that these are more sensitive to metals than related species from temperate seas. Indeed, some of the highest concentrations of Hg and Cd ever reported have been measured in tissues of apparently healthy vertebrates from the Southern Ocean. As in other marine areas of enhanced upwelling, the surface waters of the Southern Ocean have high Cd concentrations in spring, at the beginning of the algal bloom, and the metal is adsorbed or absorbed by phytoplankton and zooplankton. Some species of crustaceans (e.g., caridean decapods and hyperiid amphipods), which are important components of the diet of cephalopods, seabirds, seals, and whales, have very high concentrations of Cd. This metal therefore accumulates in the liver (or ...