A Bioenergetics Approach to Modeling PCB Bioaccumulation in Lake Ontario Salmonids

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to compare the trend of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) bioaccumulation in three species of Lake Ontario salmonids with similar diet patterns and habitat. The concept of bioenergetics, which relates the growth and energy expenditure of a fish directly to its food consumption, is integrated into the study of pollutant accumulation. The resulting bioaccumulation model is a comprehensive approach that combines the physiological information of the fish, such as diet, metabolism, respiration, habitat, age and species, with the environmental conditions in the lake. The three species of salmonids studied are Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush), Brown Trout (Salmo trutta), and Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). The model, which relies on a lakewide water quality and fish sampling database from the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy, is applied to study the pattern of total body burden of PCBs over the life span of the fish. Results from the model compare favorably to the data, and the observations clearly demonstrate the relative effects of food and water contamination on the time-dependent accumulation of PCBs in the bodies of fish. It is observed that different species sharing the same habitat and exposed to similar water contaminant concentrations are exhibiting marked difference in the body accumulation of PCBs. This difference is successfully reproduced with the model through judicious representation of their diet preferences and generically-governed metabolisms.