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Hindi Research Article
Mercury Accumulation in Food Chain of Fish, Crab and Sea Bird from Arvand River
Yaghoob Parsa1, Seyed Seyed Mohammad Bagher Nabavi2, Seyedeh Narges Nabavi2 and Mehdi Hosseini2*1Department of Marine Biology, Faculty of Biological Science, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
2Department of Marine Biology, Faculty of Marine Science, Khoramshahr University of Marine Science and Technology, Iran
- *Corresponding Author:
- Mehdi Hosseini
Department of Marine Biology
Faculty of Biological Science
Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Tel: 982129901
E-mail: smhbio@yahoo.com
Received date: March 08, 2013; Accepted date: May 21, 2014; Published date: May 29, 2014
Citation: Hosseini M, Nabavi SMB, Parsa Y, Nabavi SN (2014) Mercury Accumulation in food chain of fish, crab and sea bird from Arvand River. J Marine Sci Res Dev 4:148. doi:10.4172/2155-9910.1000148
Copyright: © 2014 Hosseini M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author andsource are credited.
Abstract
In this study, concentration of mercury (Hg) was determined in the trophic levels of fish, blue crab and one sea birds species from Arvand river, located in the Khuzestan province in the lowlands of southwestern Iran at the head of the Persian Gulf. The order of mercury concentrations in tissues of the fish species was as follows: liver>gill>muscle,in tissues of the crab was as follows: hepatopancreas>gill>muscle and in tissues of the birds species was as follows:feather>liver>kidney. Therefore, Liver in fish, hepatopancreas in crab and feather in birds exhibited higher mercury concentration than the other tissues. There was a positive correlation between mercury concentrations in fish, craband birds species with size of its food items. W e expected to see higher mercury levels in tissues of female species because they are larger and can eat larger food items. The results of this study show that highest mean mercury levels were found in the birds (A. crecca), followed by crab (P. pelagicus), pelagic fish (S.strongylura) and benthic fish (E. diacanthus). Mean value of mercury in fish species, S. strongylura were(0.54 μg g-1 dry weight), E. diacanthus (0.27 μg g-1 dry weight), crab P. pelagicus (0.74 μg g-1 dry weight)and bird species A. crecca was (3.4 μg g-1 dry weight).
