Whale Parts

By Matt Quinan:

Anthropogenic activities have significantly altered the chemistry of the world’s oceans.  Heavy metals from manufacturing are constantly transported to the oceans via rivers and streams and bring with them the potential to harm much of the life off our coasts.  One group that is particularly at risk is cetaceans.  As these large mammals consume prey laden with heavy metals, the contaminants build up in their tissue leading to potentially serious health problems.  One thing that is not well understood is the partitioning of different heavy metals throughout their bodies.  300 whale tissue samples collected from strandings in Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida are currently being processed and will soon be sent out for heavy metal analysis.  Concentrations of different heavy metals in liver, kidney, muscle, blubber, and skin samples will be compared to determine where different heavy metals tend to collect within the mammals.  This information, measured against known heavy metal concentrations in prey tissue from different areas may be able to offer us a glimpse into the lifestyles of these elusive animals. For example, if a whale is stranded on the beach in the southeastern U.S., can we develop a model that will help us determine where it spent its life based on its heavy metal fingerprint? In other words, if we know the geographic distribution of mercury, cadmium, lead etc. in the environment (e.g. in the whale's prey), can we inversely determine the geographic life history of a whale assuming that the cumulative uptake as a function of time spent in different areas will manifest a specific heavy metal fingerprint in its tissues? We are working with Dr. Annie Page-Karjian, Dr. Adam Schaefer, and Dr. Mingshun Jiang at Harbor Branch to tackle this problem, with a grant from the Harbor Branch Foundation.

 

Matt gets down and dirty subsampling frozen stranded whale tissue that will be sent off for basic heavy metals analysis by ICP-MS.