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Mercury in the fish of New Yorkʼs Great Lakes: A quarter century of near stability

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Abstract

We collected 849 fish of 16 species from New York portions of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the intervening Niagara River and its tributary Cayuga Creek, and analyzed fillets from individual fish for total mercury. Concentrations ranged from 0.029 to 1.090 ppm wet weight, with 92% below the EPA tissue residue criterion of 0.3 ppm, and thus not posing an undue risk from human consumption. We compared these 2010–2017 results to historical data spanning 40 years to assess temporal changes. The temporal pattern was generally consistent among water bodies and species: Mercury concentrations differed little between the most recent collections and fish taken from 1999–2008 and 1988–1996, while concentrations in all three of these periods were generally lower than in 1970. Smallmouth Bass from Lake Ontario were an exception with a continued decline, likely due to diet change following the introduction of exotic prey. Overall, though, fish tissue mercury concentrations from these large water bodies, which integrate regional influences, appear to have changed little in the last quarter century. We also report a consistent spatial pattern for multiple species having lower mercury concentrations in Lake Erie than in Lake Ontario over the period of record.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the United States Environmental Protection Agency for providing Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding (grant number GL-97229201) to make this study possible. We also thank New York State Department of Environmental Conservation regional staff and Great Lakes units for fish collections, and the Analytical Services Unit for sample preparation and chemical analyses. Xiangrong Li helped with statistics and graphics, and Matthew Porter assisted with technical aspects of manuscript preparation. We thank Jesse Becker for helpful discussions. Deb Ferguson and Emilie Wacogne of the NYSDEC Research Library gave invaluable assistance in obtaining published papers.

Funding

This study was funded by US Environmental Protection Agency grant GL-97229201.

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  1. Division of Fish and Wildlife, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY, 12233, USA

    Wayne Richter & Lawrence C. Skinner

  2. Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866, USA

    Wayne Richter

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Richter, W., Skinner, L.C. Mercury in the fish of New Yorkʼs Great Lakes: A quarter century of near stability. Ecotoxicology 29, 1721–1738 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-019-02130-1

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