We Were There

Fundy Profile

April 2002

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Methylmercury in the marine
food web of the Atlantic coastal waters

(John Dalziel, Gareth Harding, Peter Vass)

A survey of different environmental compartments and trophic levels in the Bay of Fundy was successfully completed from CCGV Navicula during the weeks of June 11to 21, 2001. The seawater inflow to the Bay of Fundy was sampled at selected depths from three stations across the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, from Brier Island to Grand Manan Basin. The outflow was sampled from two stations located in the waters of Grand Manan channel. Surface mud was collected from 5 stations at the mouth of the bay near the northern head of Grand Manan around Owen Basin. These sediment samples will enable us to compute the reservoir of mercury accumulated in the sediments. Elsie Sunderland, a PhD student from Simon Fraser University, who assisted in the sediment sampling, is interested in the dynamics of methylmercury within the sediment and between the overlying water. Small aquatic organisms from 25um to 1mm were collected from plankton nets at six stations and filtered and size sorted through a logarithmic sieve series on the fractionating apparatus. Nektonic organisms, such as krill and fish larvae, were collected from 10 stations with the Vass-Tucker trawl and similarly sized on standing sieves between 2 and 16mm mesh. Local fishermen are kindly collecting representative fish species for us from this area also for mercury analysis. This exercise is designed to document the degree to which methylmercury is biomagnified in the marine environment, and was stimulated partly by Canadian Wildlife Service’s findings a couple of years ago of elevated mercury concentrations in loons from southwestern Nova Scotia. Elsie Sunderland and Frank Gobas , of Simon Fraser University, will be using these results to model mercury in the Bay of Fundy.

A graduate student from Dalhousie and an oceanography teacher from Prince Andrew High School also participated in this expedition. Josee Michaud, the PhD student, collected zooplankton, to study its nutritional value as food for the endangered right whale. Frank Dalziel, the high school teacher, assisted in sampling activities over two days to broaden his knowledge and to experience life at sea during a very diverse oceanographic sampling program

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