Tracking Marine Pollution

摘要

Visit a beach almost anywhere and you will see plastic waste floating in the water and heaped above the tide lines. That debris is both a source and an overt signal of the even more pervasive contamination of marine biota by persistent chemicals. Present at ultra-trace levels but often highly toxic, chemical pollutants can be challenging to measure and understand. As the most problematic compounds biomagnify in food chains, sampling of marine top predators yields a global picture of ocean pollution.