Protists and Pollution — with an Emphasis on Planktonic Ciliates and Heavy Metals

Abstract

“Marine pollution is currently a problem of great concern”. This was the first sentence of a review paper: “Pelagic protists and pollution. A review of the past decade”, given by Curds (1982) at the first NATO-Workshop on marine protozoa in 1981. The sentence seems equally valid today. For example, he asked how long will it be before the organically polluted coastal regions extend into larger bodies of water such as the North Sea. The bloom of the toxic haptophycean alga Chrysochromulina polylepis in Scandinavian waters in late May 1988 might be an answer to this question as eutrophication could partly be responsible (Rosenberg et al. 1988, Sangfors 1988, Simen 1988). The explosion of the oil drilling platforms ‘Piper Alpha’ (July 1988), and ‘Ocean Odyssey’ (September 1988) in the North Sea also show the potential for oil pollution from accidents and normal operations of offshore oil wells. Fisher (1976) suggested that the large scale changes seen in North Sea phytoplankton communities could be due in part to the presence of persistent industrial pollutants and alteration in species composition through selective toxicity, but his arguments have been disputed by Eppley and Weiler (1979).