Relationship between biological characteristics of fish and their contamination with trace metals: a case study of perch Perca fluviatilis L. in the Baltic Sea; pp. 193–201

Abstract

Biological characteristics of fish are expected to affect the bioaccumulation patterns of trace metals in aquatic organisms. Nonetheless, this topic is relatively unstudied among fish species. In this study we explored how biological charac­teristics such as sex, maturity, and age of perch affect the contamination of their liver and muscle tissue with mercury, cadmium, copper, and zinc. According to our analyses, the contamination of fish with trace metals was complex and depended on the one hand on the type of metal and on the other hand on the studied fish biological characteristics. In the presence of significant statistical differences the concentration of trace metals was higher in males than in females and in immature than in mature individuals. Mercury was the only trace metal that accumulated with age in the fish. However, no generic relationships between the studied variables were found, and this may hint at the lack of such a relationship.