10 Year trend of levels of organochlorine pollutants in Antarctic seabirds

Contaminants like PCBs and DDE have hardly been used Antarctica. Hence, this is an excellent place to monitor global background levels of these organochlorines. In this project concentrations in penguins and petrels will be compared to 10 years ago, which will show time trends of global background contamination levels. Data set description From several birds from Hop Island, Rauer Islands near Davis, samples were collected from preenoil (oil that birds excrete to preen their feathers. This preenoil was then analysed for organochlorine pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), DDE and dieldrin. The species under investigation were the Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) and the Southern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialoides). The samples were collected from adult breeding birds, and stored in -20 degrees C as soon as possible. The analysis was done with relatively standard but very optimised methods, using a gas-chromatograph and mass-selective detection