{"id":58581,"date":"2014-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-oceanographer-examines-pollutants-in-antarctic-seal-milk\/"},"modified":"2014-01-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:00:00","slug":"uri-oceanographer-examines-pollutants-in-antarctic-seal-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/01\/uri-oceanographer-examines-pollutants-in-antarctic-seal-milk\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographer examines pollutants in Antarctic seal milk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 January 8, 2014 \u2013 An oceanographer from the 溏心vlog免费B站 is analyzing the milk from Antarctic fur seals to determine the type and quantity of pollutants the seals are accumulating and passing on to their pups.<\/p>\n


\n\tRainer Lohmann, a professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography, is collaborating with a researcher at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California to learn about the health and ecology of fur seals that winter in different locations in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to learn is where the pollutants come from and how those pollutants vary by where the seals feed,\u201d said Lohmann, who has conducted studies of marine pollutants around the world. \u201cFur seals that have given birth have lower pollutant levels than those that have not, because they pass their pollutants on to their pups in their milk.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAll of the seals the researchers are studying breed on the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica, but some spend the winter off the coast of Argentina while others winter off Chile. The two groups are thought to be exposed to different pollutants in the food they eat at their wintering grounds.<\/p>\n


\n\tLohmann\u2019s lab is analyzing 60 samples of seal milk collected between 2000 and 2010. He expects to find a wide variety of pollutants in the samples, including mercury, pesticides, flame retardants, PCBs, and other organic pollutants.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThese are all pollutants that degrade very slowly, so some may have been in the environment for decades while others, like flame retardants, are relatively new compounds that are still used by industry today,\u201d Lohmann said. <\/p>\n


\n\tFew studies of marine pollutants have been conducted in Antarctica, in part because there are greater concerns about pollutant levels in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe two hemispheres don\u2019t mix very well, which is why the northern hemisphere is more contaminated than the southern \u2013 most of the pollutants have been released in the northern hemisphere and the air doesn\u2019t flow to the south very often. So Antarctica is much cleaner,\u201d Lohmann explained. \u201cBut we don\u2019t know whether the pollutants down there are the result of a slow infiltration from the north or whether it\u2019s a slower accumulation of pollutants used and released in the south.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Lohmann, seal milk is about 50 percent fat, enabling young seals to grow rapidly. But it also means that if their mother\u2019s milk is contaminated with pollutants, the pups will quickly accumulate pollutants in their bodies as well. And due to the pups\u2019 smaller size, the researchers speculate that the young seals are more seriously effected by the pollutants than are older and larger seals.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe seals can\u2019t avoid the pollutants, so the best we can hope for is that the concentration of pollutants will decrease in their system over time, so that whatever harm there was is less harmful in the future,\u201d Lohmann said. \u201cBut some data suggests that pollutant concentrations haven\u2019t declined in the last ten years, even though most of the compounds were banned 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tLohmann also speculates that some older pollutants that had been frozen in glaciers may be released again as the glaciers melt due to climate change.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThat could cause wildlife to be re-exposed to chemicals that previously were safely locked away in the ice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe results of Lohmann\u2019s analysis is expected in late February. His research is funded by a grant from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 January 8, 2014 \u2013 An oceanographer from the 溏心vlog免费B站 is analyzing the milk from Antarctic fur seals to determine the type and quantity of pollutants the seals are accumulating and passing on to their pups. Rainer Lohmann, a professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography, is collaborating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}