Mercury Policy Project

Climate change may be magnifying the mercury content of the polar bears’ diet.  A recently study, “Stable Isotope Food-web Analysis and Mercury Biomagnification in Polar Bears” shows that polar bears eat from two distinct food webs, one the ice algae-based web and the other  ocean’s phytoplankton-based food web.   As climate change shrinks the polar ice, polar bears face increased dependency on their other food source, the mercury-laden marine fish and animals.