Abstract
Trace amounts of cadmium were added to isolated links of a sewage/seawater-plankton-shellfish food chain employed in a prototype tertiary treatment-aquaculture system in operation at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Accumulation of metal was studied in two types of phytoplankton, a green platymonad (Prasinocladus tricornutum) and a mixture of diatoms (predominantly Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Chaetoceros simplex), and two species of shellfish, the American oyster (Crassostrea virginica) and the hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria). The algae showed a rapid increase in metal concentration until an equilibrium was reached, proportional to the initial concentration introduced. Shellfish species exhibited a continual increase in concentration when exposed to seawater and algae mixtures contaminated with cadmium. Separation of the two pathways of transfer identified the algae as the principal source of accumulation in the aquaculture system. Safe levels of cadmium were evaluated by determining final concentrations of cadmium expected in the shellfish tissue for various algae-shellfish-human food chains.
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