Contaminant Bioaccumulation in Landlocked Char Food Webs in the High Arctic

This purpose of this project is to study how food webs influence the transfer of contaminants to the top predator, landlocked Arctic char, in the Northern Contaminants Program's (NCP) 'focal ecosystem' lakes on Cornwallis Island. Previous studies have shown that mercury and perfluorinated chemicals are carried into Arctic lakes during spring melt and are taken up and concentrated through the food web into char. This research examined food web accumulation of mercury, which has both natural and human sources and undergoes complex transformations in lakes, and of perfluorinated chemicals, which are entirely human-made, arrive solely by atmospheric deposition, and are not transformed in the environment. We built on previous research by contrasting how these two persistent contaminants concentrate through lake food webs and examining factors that affect their levels in char and other organisms in High Arctic lakes. The research focused on lakes in the Resolute Bay area (North, Small, Meretta, Resolute, 9 Mile, Char), because the arctic char and the supporting food webs of these lakes hd already been studied.