The Museum of the Aleutians’ new summer exhibit explores the region’s past ecosystems. It looks at the Pribilof mammoths, the ancient mammals of Unalaska and mercury in marine food webs throughout the region.
Scientists Caroline Funk and Nicole Misarti are behind the mercury research. On June 3, they gave a presentation to the community at the Unalaska Public Library before debuting their work at the museum.
“We have worked together on this project for about seven years now,” Funk said. “We are so, just grateful and delighted to be a part of the opening exhibition.”
She, Misarti and a team of researchers were awarded a $2.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research mercury in the Aleutians. They wanted to know: Has mercury always been part of the Aleutian ecosystem, or did it arrive recently with the Industrial Revolution?
“We looked at fur seals, we looked at sea lions and we looked at cod,” Funk said. “We looked at them because they are long-lived predators.”
Specifically, they looked at their bones. They gathered 2,645 samples from archeological collections — far more bones than earlier studies of this kind.
They found that mercury has been moving through Aleutian food webs for thousands of years, with higher levels in the western islands. And there was no clear spike after volcanic eruptions, which is a major natural source of mercury before industrial activity.
“One thing that we always like to make clear with this project is that we're not looking at levels of contaminants that are of concern for people to consume,” Misarti said.
Misarti stressed that the mercury levels they found are tiny, basically comparable to a single drop from an eyedropper in an Olympic-size pool.
To learn more about Funk and Misarti’s research on mercury in the Aleutians, check out the exhibit, which runs through October, at the Museum of the Aleutians. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
