Daniel Červený - Use of a young-of-the-year fish for assessment of Persistent Organic
Pollutants contamination in aquatic environment
Adult fish are commonly used as an indicators of contamination in aquatic environment
because they represent the top consumers in this type of ecosystem, which results in higher
levels of various contaminants in their body. Nevertheless, approaches using adult fish as
indicators of contamination has several limitations or disadvantages.
As the level of contamination in fish body is species and age-specific the comparison of
results obtained from different localities within one work or by different authors is usually
hard if sampled fish differ in mentioned characteristics. Also the migration of adult fish plays
a role in certainty of obtained results because some species undergo a long migration passages
during some periods of their live so contamination of their body does not need to correspond
to locality where fish was caught. There are ecologic/ethic consequences as well. As there is a
stable site of localities in Czech Republic where annual monitoring take place, sampling adults
of specific fish species in reproductive age in sufficient number for analyses could affect its
occurrence at the locality. Finally, different contaminants accumulate in different tissues of
fish body and it is very expensive and practically impossible to sample all fish organs/tissues
and to get reliable data from chemical analyses of all of these samples.
The occurrence of Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment arouses
scientific interest primarily because of their endocrine disrupting effects on animals and
humans. POPs are characterised by a high affinity for adipose tissue and slow biodegradability,
which results in their bioaccumulation in various animal species and biomagnification along
the trophic chain.
The concentrations of certain POPs will be analysed in muscle of two indicator species of
adult fish and in whole body homogenate of different species of young-of-the-year (YOY) fish
caught at two experimental sampling sites. Analyses will be completed using liquid and gas
chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry devices (LC, GC/MS) after extraction of
target analytes. The aim of the experiment will be to evaluate a possibility to use YOY fish as
bioindicators of aquatic environment contamination instead of adult fish and to compare
these two studied approaches.