Paper: Killer whale ecotox

So a paper I coauthored has just come out:

ACCUMULATION AND TRANSFER OF CONTAMINANTS IN KILLER WHALES (ORCINUS ORCA) FROM NORWAY: INDICATIONS FOR CONTAMINANT METABOLISM.
HANS WOLKERS, PETER CORKERON, SOFIE VAN PARIJS, TIU SIMILA and BERT VAN BAVEL

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Vol. 26, No. 8, pp. 1582–1590, 2007

I darted the whales (to get the samples) and did the stats, both of which were kinda fun.

Take home message from the paper is rather less happy: (from the paper's conclusion) "Killer whales hold the gloomy record of most-polluted European arctic mammal."

WWF, one of the project's funders, wrote Hans' second field season up - see here and here
Abstract


Blubber tissue of one subadult and eight male adult killer whales was sampled in Northern Norway in order to assess the degree and type of contaminant exposure and transfer in the herring–killer whale link of the marine food web. A comprehensive selection of contaminants was targeted, with special attention to toxaphenes and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). In addition to assessing exposure and food chain transfer, selective accumulation and metabolism issues also were addressed. Average total polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and pesticide levels were similar, approximately 25 g/g lipid, and PBDEs were approximatelyy 0.5 g/g. This makes killer whales one of the most polluted arctic animals, with levels exceeding those in polar bears. Comparing the contamination of the killer whale’s diet with the diet of high-arctic species such as white whales reveals six to more than 20 times higher levels in the killer whale diet. The difference in contaminant pattern between killer whales and their prey and the metabolic index calculated suggested that these cetaceans have a relatively high capacity to metabolize contaminants. Polychlorinated biphenyls, chlordanes, and dichlorodiphenyldichloro-ethylene (DDE) accumulate to some degree in killer whales, although toxaphenes and PBDEs might be partly broken down.


If you want a reprint, shoot me an email & I'll send it on.

Photos by Ilse van Opzeeland