The aims of this study include (1) Examine the total mercury and organic mercury concentrations in the muscle and liver tissues of dolphinfish, Coryphaena hippurus that collected in Tungkang and Taitung, Taiwan, in order to understand their safety consumption by human beings due to their high trophic level in a marine ecosystem; (2) Investigate the species difference in comparison to other marine high trophic organisms, e.g. shark, tuna; (3) Look for the pattern of Hg bioaccumulation to see whether it matches the three models defined by Holsbeek et al.
A total of 209 samples of Coryphaena hippurus were collected from Tungkang and Taitung. In the 34 samples from Tungkang, males and females were 11 and 23, respectively, whereas 197 samples from Taitung included 92 males and 83 females. Samples from Tungkang were investigated individually, but those from Taitung were pooled by size into 58 samples, 27 males and 24 females. The Hg levels in the samples were wet digested and determined by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrophotometer.
The results showed that there was no gender and site difference in the relationship between fork length and body weight in both Tungkang and Taitung samples. The relationship was BW = 0.00005 FL2.7443. The mean and range of total and organic Hg concentrations in muscles and livers of dolphinfish were 0.138 (0.045~0.506) and 0.103 (0.009~0.388), and 0.103 (0.037~0.260) and 0.077 (0.003~0.249), respectively. These concentrations were lower than the WHO food safety level for human consumption and Hg concentrations of shark and tuna.
The total Hg concentrations in the muscles were significantly higher than those in livers in both sites. However, only samples of Taitung revealed the organic Hg concentrations of muscles were higher than those of livers. Concerning the site difference, the muscle concentrations of organic Hg, and the liver concentrations of total and organic Hg in Taitung were higher than those of Tungkang. There was positive linear relationship between total and organic Hg as well as in muscle and liver. However, no significant relationship was found between the Hg concentrations and fork length/body weight.
The Hg bioaccumulative model of dolphinfish was similiar with Holsbeek et al.¡¦s models. In muscle, the largest sizes of the fish contained the highest organic Hg levels. In companying with no variation of total and inorganic Hg, it looks like Type I model of Holsbeek et al.¡¦s results.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0614102-140613 |
| Date | 14 June 2002 |
| Creators | Hsu, Fen-Sheng |
| Contributors | none, none, none, none, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0614102-140613 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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