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The Effect of Whole‐Lake Nutrient Enrichment on Mercury Concentration in Age‐1 Yellow Perch
Author(s) -
Essington Timothy E.,
Houser Jeffrey N.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(2003)132<0057:teowln>2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - perch , dilution , nutrient , percidae , zoology , mercury (programming language) , biology , chemistry , fish <actinopterygii> , fishery , environmental chemistry , ecology , physics , computer science , thermodynamics , programming language
We evaluated the effect of whole‐lake nutrient enrichment on Hg concentration in age‐age‐1 yellow perch Perca flavescens and assessed whether reduced Hg concentration in fish from enriched lakes could be attributed solely to enhanced fish growth (i.e., growth dilution). A survey of yellow perch in eighteight reference lakes and twotwo experimentally enriched lakes (P input = 2–6 mg · m −2 · d −1 ; N : P > 25 : 1 by atoms) indicated that yellow perch Hg concentration was highly correlated with lake pH and nutrient enrichment ( R 2 = 0.87). Age‐1 yellow perch were four to five times larger and had 50% lower Hg concentrations in enriched lakes than in reference lakes of an equivalent pH (reference lakes = 0.24 μg Hg/g wet mass; enriched lakes = 0.11 μg Hg/g). A mass balance model of Hg dynamics indicated that growth dilution could only account for 30–40% of the reduction in yellow perch Hg concentration, suggesting that lake enrichment produced effects on fish Hg concentration that were not explained by differences in growth rate. A change in yellow perch diet likely explains the remainder of the difference in yellow perch Hg concentration between reference and enriched lakes.