Organohalogen contaminants and trace metals in North-East Atlantic porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus)

Metal and metalloid concentrations in the tissues of dusky Carcharhinus obscurus, sandbar C. plumbeus and white Carcharodon carcharias sharks from south-eastern Australian waters, and the implications for human consumption

“…4), and also highlight the wide variation in metal concentrations between species, individuals and tissues (de Pinho et al, 2002;Endo et al, 2008;Escobar-Sanchez et al, 2010;Bendall et al, 2014). Several cases of extremely high concentrations of metals and metalloids were found in the present study ( Fig.…”

“…which occupy the same trophic level as sandbar sharks (Cortes, 1999). The porbeagles in their study from north-east Atlantic waters had substantially lower mean concentrations of all metals and metalloids in comparison to the present study, with the exception of Cd, Cu and Fe (Bendall et al, 2014). This may be due to a differentiation in diet between sandbar and porbeagle sharks, with the latter species' diet incorporating a higher percentage of fish and cephalopods but no marine mammals and few other chondrichthyans (Cortes, 1999;Joyce et al, 2002).…”

You Are What You Eat, Microplastics in Porbeagle Sharks From the North East Atlantic: Method Development and Analysis in Spiral Valve Content and Tissue

“…These chemicals are either leached from the plastic material itself (e.g., additives) or adsorbed to plastic from the surrounding water and thus taken up together with the plastic by the organism when ingested (Teuten et al, 2009;Koelmans et al, 2014;Yeo et al, 2017). The chemical concentrations of these persistent pollutants accumulate in biota and are often higher at the top of the food chain (Whitacre, 2010;Bendall et al, 2014;Nicolaus et al, 2016).…”

“…Therefore, the impact of microplastics might be an additional problem for a critically endangered species, such as the North East Atlantic top-predator porbeagle shark (Bendall et al, 2014;IUCN, 2015;Nicolaus et al, 2016). Porbeagle sharks, Lamna nasus (Bonnaterre, 1788), are stout-bodied sharks with large black eyes and pointed snouts attaining a maximum length of about 355 cm (total length) (Francis et al, 2009).…”

“…Their low fecundity, late maturation age and prolonged gestation period makes them susceptible to overfishing (Bendall et al, 2012). In addition, they are long-lived species and are therefore potential targets for contaminant accumulation, such as mercury (Bendall et al, 2014;Nicolaus et al, 2016). Moreover, these sharks might be subject to direct or indirect plastic ingestion, as they reside in marine waters with reported high levels of plastic debris (Pham et al, 2013;Eriksen et al, 2014;Woodall et al, 2015b;Hartley et al, 2018), including microplastics (Lusher et al, 2014;van Sebille et al, 2015;Maes et al, 2017b), and the presence of microplastics in their prey (Foekema et al, 2013;Lusher et al, 2013Lusher et al, , 2016GESAMP, 2015b).…”