Oceans and Fisheries Seminars

Amina Schartup is an Assistant Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). Before coming to SIO, Schartup was a Research Associate at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Schartup also spent 2 years as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the NSF Office of Polar Program–Arctic Section developing a federal guidance document on pursuing ethical research in the Arctic. Schartup holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Connecticut, a MSc in geochemistry from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, and a BSc in chemistry from Paris Descartes University.

Mercury is a naturally occurring element that has been mined and released by humans for more than 3,000 years. Inorganic mercury is released by human activities and makes up most of the mercury reservoir in the environment. However, only the organic form of mercury, methylmercury, biomagnifies in food webs and is associated with potent neurodevelopmental impacts in humans and wildlife. Understanding the microbial reactions and geochemical conditions conducive to the formation of methylmercury has been the focus of many years of research due to global impacts on the health of fish-consuming wildlife and human populations. Most of the global methylmercury exposure for human populations is from marine ecosystems due to bioaccumulation in predatory fish at levels that are a million times, or more, higher than seawater. This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances in the understanding of methylmercury formation, uptake by phytoplankton, and biomagnification in marine food webs. My approach combines new field data collection, experimental measurements, isotopic tools, and numerical modeling. I will also discuss how changes in the biogeochemistry of marine ecosystems are affecting the mercury cycle.