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Research Interests: Modeling metal bioaccumulation in marine organisms

Understanding metal bioaccumulation in marine organisms is important for the organisms themselves, their predators and ultimately human consumers of contaminated seafood. My research focuses on factors influencing metal accumulation in marine fish. Fish acquire metal from the dissolved phase and their diet, and few studies have investigated factors which control the rate of metal uptake, release and body distribution in these organisms. Factors include salinity, dissolved organic carbon concentration, prey selection and metal concentration. I use a radiotracer technique to calculate metal uptake and loss parameters from both exposure routes using variations in the factors described above, which is then entered into a bioenergetic kinetic-based model to predict metal body burden at steady-state. Lab predictions can then be tested against independent field data. Contribution: Explain what metals are and how they are categorized (essential/non-essential; class A and class B etc), the transfer of metals through the marine food chain, how we conduct trophic transfer experiments, the risk to humans from consuming contaminated seafood (especially methylmercury).