Mercury in landlocked Arctic char

This project is part of the Northern Contaminants Program core monitoring and looks at contaminant levels in landlocked Arctic char from lakes in Nunavut over time. Landlocked char are the only top predators in most Canadian high Arctic lakes and, therefore, can serve as a sentinel species for monitoring changes in contaminants. The project has information on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), mercury and other elements in char from lakes near the community of Resolute Bay, Nunavut and for Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island spanning up to 30 years. Results to date show that mercury concentrations in char from most of the study lakes have remained steady or have declined over the past ~10 years. Concentrations of most POPs are also declining steadily, except for total chlorobenzenes which were found to be increasing since the mid-2000s. This increase, which is mainly due to hexachlorobenzene, has also been observed in other studies of seabirds and ringed seals and suggests that there are still major emissions of chlorobenzenes despite its phase out globally under the Stockholm Convention. This study is on-going and would not be possible without collaboration with the community of Resolute Bay, Nunavut where residents participate in fish collections each year. Results are regularly communicated with the community through the local Hunters and Trappers Association and through community meetings.

Supplemental Information

The Northern Contaminants Program (NCP, http://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_7A463DBA.html) was established in 1991 in response to concerns about human exposure to elevated levels of contaminants in wildlife species that are important to the traditional diets of northern Aboriginal peoples. Early studies found a wide variety of substances, many of which had no Arctic or Canadian sources, but which were, nevertheless, reaching unexpectedly high levels in the Arctic ecosystem.

The Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN) https://www.ccin.ca and the Polar Data Catalogue (PDC) https://polardata.ca have been developed over the past two decades through collaborative partnerships between the University of Waterloo and numerous government, university, and private organizations to provide the data and information management infrastructure for the Canadian cryospheric community. The PDC is one of Canada’s primary online sources for data and information about the Arctic and is Canada's National Antarctica Data Centre.

Polar Data Catalogue Canadian Cryospheric Information Network Metadata Record:

https://www.polardata.ca/pdcsearch/PDCSearch.jsp?doi_id=914

Supporting Projects:

Northern Contaminants Program (NCP)