Development of a Mathematical Model to Predict the Bioaccumulation of Organic Toxins in Finned Fish.

Research Team: Professor Yoram Cohen (PI), Rajeev Vohra (Graduate Student).

When hydrophobic organic toxins enter clean ecosystems, indigenous aquatic biota become contaminated. The internal build up of toxins in fish results in a ecological threat not only to that particular species, but also to species that depend on it as a food source. Such species include higher level food chain predators and possibly humans. In order to predict the degree of bioaccumulation of hydrophobic toxins in finned fish under dynamic conditions, a compartmental dynamic food-chain bioaccumulation model was developed. The model was developed with the intent of minimizing the number of required user-input parameters while maintaining flexibility of describing a wide range of plausible scenarios. The model is shown to be in excellent agreement with more complex models ((Norstrom,1976;Barber 1989,1991) and with available field data. The effect of various uptake mechanisms, morphometric parameters and species diet on toxin accumulation in finned fish was studied via a number of test cases covering a wide set of species. The interfacing of the current bioaccumulation model with the Integrated Spatial Multimedia Compartmental Model (ISMCM) developed by Cohen and van de Water (1994) is currently underway.