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Published January 21, 1977 | public
Journal Article

Comparative Distributions of Alkalies, Alkaline Earths and Lead among Major Tissues of the Tuna Thunnus alalunga

Abstract

The occurrences of K, Rb, Cs, Ca, Sr, Ba and Pb have been determined in various tissues of the tuna fish Thunnus alalunga. K, Rb, and Cs are distributed uniformly throughout the organs of the fish; 95% of the ca and Sr, and 70% of the Ba and Pb are contained in the skeleton. It is found that there are smaller amouts of Cs, Ba and Pb associated with the nutrient metals K and Ca in a marine animal compared to a terrestrial animal. This difference is a result of the purity of K and Ca in sea-water and the smaller amounts of trace metals associated with them compared to the impurity of K and Ca in terrestrial rocks. Food-chain enhancement and depletion of metals can be evaluated by comparing rations of trace metals to abundant nutrient metals in seawater and tuna. Cs is enriched relative to K in going from seawater to tuna by a factor of 13. Sr and Ba are both depleted by factors of 5 relative to Ca in going from seawater to tuna, while Pb is enriched relative to Ca by a factor of 14. Special clean laboratory procedures were used to prepare samples for accurate analysis by stable isotope dilution mass spectrometric techniques.

Additional Information

© 1977 Springer-Verlag. Date of final manuscript acceptance: September 24, 1976. Communicated by J.S. Pearse, Santa Cruz. Contribution No. 2640. Publications of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. We thank M. Sargent and T. Folsom of Scripps Institution of Oceanography for obtaining the tuna, L.T. Silver of the California Institute of Technology for providing teflon bombs, F. Tera, also of CIT, for providing alkali and alkaline earth isotope tracers, and w. Noland and L. Davis for technical assistance. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. IDO74-24362 from IDOE.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023