Stewart, Bryce Donald orcid.org/0000-0001-5103-5041, Boig, Charlotte, Jenkins, Stuart et al. (5 more authors) (2021) Metal pollution as a potential threat to shell strength and survival in marine bivalves. Science of the Total Environment. 143019. ISSN 0048-9697
Abstract
Marine bivalve molluscs, such as scallops, mussels and oysters, are crucial components of coastal ecosystems, providing a range of ecosystem services, including a quarter of the world’s seafood. Unfortunately, due to human activity, coastal marine areas often suffer from metal contamination. We establish that increased levels of metal pollution (zinc, copper and lead) in sediments near the Isle of Man, resulting from historical mining, strongly correlate with significant weakening of shell strength in king scallops, Pecten maximus. This weakness increases mortality during fishing and leaves individuals more exposed to predation. Comparative structural analysis revealed that shells from the contaminated area were thinner and exhibited a pronounced mineralisation disruption parallel to the shell surface within the foliated region of both the top and bottom valves. Our data suggest that these disruptions caused reduced fracture strength and hence increased mortality, even at subcritical contamination levels with respect to current international standards. This hitherto unreported effect is important since such non-apical responses rarely feed into environmental quality assessments, with significant implications for population survival. Hence, our findings highlight the impact of metal pollution on shell mineralisation in bivalves, and urge a reappraisal of currently accepted critical contamination levels.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. |
Keywords: | scallops,fisheries,Seafood,pollution,Ecotoxicology,Heavy metals |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Environment and Geography (York) The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Physics (York) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC EP/I001514/1 |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 02 Nov 2020 12:20 |
Last Modified: | 22 Dec 2024 00:15 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143019 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143019 |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:167532 |
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