Occurence of organochlorine pollutants in the eggs and dropping-amended soil of Antarctic large animals and its ecological significance

This dataset reports a study on eggs of skuas, penguins and giant petrel. It was found that the concentration accumulation of POPs was in the order of ΣPCB>ΣDDT>HCB>ΣHCH. The lower accumulation of HCHs in the seabird eggs, compared to other POPs, might be due to the decreased use of HCHs in agriculture and easy degradation relative to that of PCBs, DDTs and HCBs. In the eggs of skuas, concentration levels of ΣPCB (the total of PCB101, PCB118, PCB138, PCB153, PCB180 and PCB194) ranged from 91.9 to 515.5 ng/g, ΣDDT (p,p'-DDT +p,p'-DDE) 56.6 to 304 ng/g, HCB 6.5 to 70.5 ng/g, and ΣHCH (α + γ isomers) <0.5 to 2.0 ng/g. In the penguin eggs, concentrations of ΣPCB ranged from 0.5 to 0.8 ng/g, ΣDDT 2.0 to 10.1 ng/g, HCB 6.0 to 10.2 ng/g, and ΣHCH 0.1 to 0.4 ng/g. In the eggs of giant petrel, concentrations of ΣPCB ranged from 48.1 to 81.7 ng/g, ΣDDT 12.7 to 53.7 ng/g, ΣHCB 4.2 to 8.8 ng/g and ΣHCH 0.5 to 1.5 ng/g. These results agreed well with those from the similar study by Weichbrodt et al, (1999) for the average accumulation levels of ΣHCH, ΣDDT, and ΣPCB in Antarctic skua eggs. The average concentration was brown skua > South Polar skua > giant petrel > penguin. The major foods of the brown skua were penguin eggs and infants, also they liked to forage for human waste. South Polar skuas prey on fishes, zooplankton, and small-sized birds; they also eat corpses of penguins and seals as a supplement. Penguins cannot fly and their major food is Antarctic krill, fishes and shrimps. They are also preyed upon by skua and giant petrels. Giant petrels prey on zooplankton, cephalopods, and fish. From the prey-predator relationship it could be seen that the accumulation of PCBs and OCPs in the seabirds was the result of their position in the food chain.