abstract |
A little-known original report of the zoological expedition of July–August 1991, which landed on Bolshevik Island, the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, has been restored. This was the first time when levels of POPs and PCBs, as well as heavy metals (HM: Zn, Cu, Co, Pb) in the tissues and organs of mammals, birds, and fishes (n=46) were analysed. In total, 450 and 180 measurements were performed after the cleaning and selection, respectively. The samples included muscle, liver, lungs, kidneys, brain, internal fat, as well as eggshells and feathers. These rare data have not been published yet. The methodology and instrumentation of the 1990s are described for future comparisons. The article focuses on mammals. During the expedition, encounters took place with polar bears, reindeer, arctic hares, foxes and wolves, but samples could have only been taken from fox and wolf. Mammals accounted for just 7% of the samples for the analysis, but samples of birds and fishes helped somewhat to compensate for this shortfall and provide an overall picture. Most importantly, as the early 1990s, this little-studied archipelago, discovered only in 1913, already showed signs of contamination with POPs, PCBs, and HM, which manifested in the tissues and organs of animals at higher trophic levels. The presence of DDT (in the form of the metabolite DDE) indicated the existence of an unknown source of toxicants that had been present and active for a relatively long time. The concentration of Zn in the muscles of wolves (102 mg/kg) was the highest of all samples; its ∑PCBs showed up to 5440 µg/kg. Arctic fox tissue samples were contaminated with 0.4…21.3 mg/kg of HM but showed no presence of POPs or PCBs. An overlap of our data (about the pollution of the island ecosystems with persistent toxicants as early as 1991) with the faunistic news of 2004 reported by N. Abramson et al. regarding the occurrence of a rare relict post-Pleistocene collared lemming species on Bolshevik Island, we might add, some protected animals from the IUCN Red List (Ursus maritimus, Pagophila eburnea)—should long since have been regarded by scientists as a red flag, i.e. a new threat. This study represents the author’s next contribution to the national library of knowledge on fieldwork practices in the Arctic. |
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