Bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes

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Bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes

• Jay Sobel
• Sara Syswerda

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Game fish of the Great Lakes Region
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What do the fish eat?

• Fish are consumers, which means that they eat
  other organisms, and dont make their own food.
  They might eat
• Plankton, algae, little fish, insects, dead
  stuff, fungi

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STOP!

• Play game!

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Rules of the Game

• Each person is given a role as a member of a
  typical Great Lakes aquatic ecosystem
• The object of the game is to gather as much food
  as possible while avoiding being eaten each
  member of the ecosystem gathers food in a
  different way, so read your info sheet
• Some food sources will also have a penny
  attached, remove the penny and keep it in your
  ziploc bag
• If you are tagged by somebody, read your cards to
  determine the outcome of the interaction
• If you are eaten by a predator, give them all of
  your pennies and 25 of your food (drop the rest
  on the ground) and return to the starting point

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At end of game

• Record data on blackboard
• amount of food gathered
• number of pennies

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Food web activity

• Form groups of 4-5 members
• Using the information sheets from the game, draw
  a diagram that illustrates the interactions
  between species (food web diagram)
• Use lines and arrows to show outcomes of
  interactions (example)
• volunteer

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from Yodzis 2001
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What do organisms get from their prey?

• Energy
• Vitamins
• Minerals
• Water
• Anything else?

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You get chemicals, too! Here in Michigan

• -Mercury
• -PCBs
• -Dioxin
• -Chlordane
• -PBBs
• -DDT

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Bioaccumulation

• When chemicals get passed on from prey to the
  predators that eat them, we call this
  bioaccumulation.

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Look at data from game

• go to excel

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from environment Canada (www.ec.gc.ca)
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What does that mean if you eat big fish?

• You will be getting all the chemicals that fish
  ate, all the chemicals the fish it ate ate, and
  so on, all the way down the food chain.

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from Michigan Department of Natural Resources
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