Mercury(Hg) one of the most poisonous metal for life can cause paralysis, nervous breakdown, and mental impairment. Recent discoveries of science have indicated that rising temperature of the ocean can increase the toxic level of mercury in sea creatures and this contamination also physically harming food supplies.

A group of scientist from the Umeå University in Sweden has discovered that Land runoff or overland flow can increase almost 10 to 40 percent of water mud, organic wastes, industrial residues and other nondegradable things. New laboratory experiments suggest that cloudy water interrupts the ecosystem by shifting the balance of microbes like zooplankton. Their findings were first published in the journal of ScienceAdvances.

Biogeochemist at Umeå University in Sweden, Dr. Erik Björn said in a statement,”Our study confirms this hypothesis and shows that an increase of 15% - 20% of the content of organic matter in our waters can cause a shift from an autotrophic based to a heterotrophic-based food web and lead to the content of methylmercury increasing two to sevenfold in zooplankton”. Zooplankton is the base of ocean food chain, as small creatures eat zooplanktons they got affected by methylmercury. Smaller species are the diet of larger species so every creature including humans become victims of this domino effect.

According to ScienceNews, burning of fossil fuels has tripled up the amount of mercury in nature since the industrial revolution started. Shifting rainfall by climate changes washes more organic wastes towards the ocean. For this study, researchers created the same environment at the Swedish lab by filling 5-meter-tall vats with marine microbes containing methylmercury. Dr. Björn and his team noticed those vats were darkened by the extra organic matter showed an ecosystem shift from light-loving phytoplankton to dark-dwelling bacteria that eat the extra material.

Phytoplankton is consumed by Zooplankton, but they don’t eat bacteria. Alternatively, protozoa consume bacteria and Zooplankton nosh on protozoa. So the addition of protozoa in the middle step of experiment causes zooplankton methylmercury levels two to seven times higher than in vats without the extra organic matter. So it is better to slow down the emission of fossil fuels and prevent other organic wastes from being mixed at oceans.

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