• Gissi, Francesca
• Jolley, Dianne
• Garman, Emily
• Binet, Monique
• Schlekat, Chris

Abstract

In recent years, anthropogenic activities, including agriculture, industry, shipping and mining operations, have intensified in the tropics. The pressures placed on tropical marine ecosystems may be even greater than those in temperate regions. While risk assessment tools and ecotoxicological data for temperate systems are abundant, there is limited information on the effects of anthropogenic contaminants on tropical organisms and ecosystems.The scarcity of toxicity testing protocols using tropical species has resulted in the use of temperate species as surrogates for toxicity assessments in tropical regions. Major differences exist between tropical and temperate ecosystems, including climate, geochemistry, animal and plant physiology, ecosystem structure, and biodiversity.These differences create uncertainty in terms of risk assessment, and specifically with the relevance of temperate ecotoxicity data to tropical ecosystems. The South East Asian and Melanesian (SEAM) region contributes substantially to global nickel production.However, the environmental impacts of nickel mining and processing in SEAM are not well understood. These tropical marine habitats are highly productive, and have high ecological diversity, economic and cultural value, and so there is an urgent need to quantify risks of nickel exposure within these ecosystems.The overall aim of this project is to gain an improved understanding of the environmental effects and exposure to nickel in the tropical marine ecosystems of SEAM. In order to address this, toxicity tests with key endemic species will be developed and applied. A comprehensive literature search and gap analysis identified the need to further investigate chronic nickel toxicity to key tropical marine species including microalgae, macroalgae, seagrass, mangroves, crustaceans, molluscs, echinoderms and cnidarians. Results from the gap analysis will be presented as well as results from experiments to fill the gaps and future research.Ultimately, these effects data will be compared with representative exposure information in the risk characterization phase of the project.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• nickel
• phase
• experiment
• toxicity