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Ocean fish acquire more mercury at depth http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1377480635
Mercury--a common industrial toxin--is carried through the atmosphere before settling on the ocean and entering the marine food web....
predatory fish that feed at deeper depths in the open ocean, like opah and swordfish, have higher mercury concentrations than those that feed in waters near the surface, like mahi-mahi and yellowfin tuna...
Bacteria in the oceans change atmospheric mercury into the organic monomethylmercury form that can accumulate in animal tissue. Large predatory fish contain high levels of methylmercury in part because they eat lots of smaller, mercury-containing fish. In 2009, researchers at UH Manoa determined that the depths at which a species feeds is nearly as important as its position in the food chain in determining how much methylmercury it contains....
The finding that mercury is being converted to its toxic, bioavailable form at depth is important in part because scientists expect mercury levels at intermediate depths in the North Pacific to rise in coming decades.
"The implication is that predictions for increased mercury in deeper water will result in higher levels in fish," said Joel Blum of the University of Michigan, the lead author on the new paper and a professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences. "If we're going to effectively reduce the mercury concentrations in open-ocean fish, we're going to have to reduce global emissions of mercury, including emissions from places like China and India."
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[Read more stories about:
heavy metals, toxic buildup, predator depletion]
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'Doc Jim says:
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At least there's one place where the mercury is dropping!
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