OCEANOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENTAL CANADIAN MARINE ANIMAL RESEARCH SOCIETY RESCUE NETWORK

It would be reasonable to assume that pollutants in the marine environment have decreased following decades of world wide regulations and standards. However, recent reports have shown that pollution is still a lingering problem despite numerous decades of attempting to control what is being released into the various rivers, watersheds, lakes and oceans. Pollutants such as heavy metals can linger for many decades and even centuries causing serious problems for future generations of animals and humans. In fact, within the heavy metals, mercury is the second leading cause of death after lead. Using data from the scientific literature, this report shows that mercury, a naturally occurring and man made heavy metal, has not decreased or at best has remained constant after decades of regulations. Studies on livers of dolphins from the British Isles show a 6 fold increase of mercury from 1989 to 1998 (from ~20 to 130 µg/g wet weight respectively). Studies examining seal livers from across the Canadian Arctic reveal that mercury levels have not decreased from 29 µg/g wet weight in 1972 to 31 µg/g wet weight in 1996. World wide, seal livers from 1972 to 1994 show that mercury levels have doubled from ~12 µg/g wet weight to ~ 25 µg/g wet weight. As decades of mercury emissions work their way up the food chain and are augmented by mercury still being discharged by today’s coal burning plants, human populations around the world are in danger- those who eat several meals of fis