Evaluation of Nonlethal Methods for the Analysis of Mercury in Fish Tissue

Thousands of fish are sacrificed each year to determine potential human exposure to mercury (Hg) from fish consumption. In this paper, we use lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis and northern pike Esox lucius to demonstrate that accurate and reliable measures of fish muscle Hg concentrations can be determined from small samples (100 mg) for CVAAS. There was no difference in precision of Hg concentrations among tissue extraction methods when biopsy samples were analyzed via cold‐vapor atomic fluorescence spectrophotometry (CVAFS). Mean tissue Hg concentrations obtained with the biopsy techniques and CVAAS or CVAFS were similar to benchmark concentrations in fillet samples (within 6%), even for TC– CVAAS. A field study of the effects of the DP biopsy method on survival of northern pike showed that tissue harvesting did not reduce survival. Our results clearly demonstrate that analysis of Hg content in muscle harvested with biopsy tools provides Hg measures comparable in accuracy to traditional, whole‐fish methods but without causing mortality.