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Marine mammals, due to their long life span, key position in the food web, and large lipid deposits, often face significant health risks from accumulating contaminants. This systematic review examines published literature on pollutant-induced adverse health effects in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red-listed marine mammal species. Thereby, identifying gaps in literature across different extinction risk categories, spatial distribution and climatic zones of studied habitats, commonly used methodologies, researched pollutants, and mechanisms from cellular to population levels. Our findings reveal a lower availability of exposure-effect data for higher extinction risk species (critically endangered 16%, endangered 15%, vulnerable 66%), highlighting the need for more research. For many threatened species in the Southern Hemisphere pollutant-effect relationships are not established. Non-destructively sampled tissues, like blood or skin, are commonly measured for exposure assessment. The most studied pollutants are POPs (31%), metals (30%), and pesticides (17%). Research on mixture toxicity is scarce while pollution-effect studies primarily focus on molecular and cellular levels. Bridging the gap between molecular data and higher-level effects is crucial, with computational approaches offering a high potential through in vitro to in vivo extrapolation using (toxico-)kinetic modelling. This could aid in population-level risk assessment for threatened marine mammals.

The green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, spends a considerable part of its life in coastal waters foraging on seagrass and/or algae, which brings it close to anthropogenic pollutant sources. Elevated concentrations of chemical contaminants from urban, industrial and agricultural run-off accumulate in coastal environments. These pollutants have the potential to cause serious harm to C. mydas populations. However, exposure and toxicity data are challenging to obtain for free-ranging, protected wildlife species like C. mydas. Furthermore, a lack of quantitative tools linking long-term external contaminant exposure, the uptake and tissue distribution of chemicals (toxicokinetics), and the biological pathway perturbations related to adverse health outcomes (toxicodynamics) hamper efforts by scientists and policymakers to quantify the risk of pollutants adversely affecting C. mydas health. Changes in C. mydas population abundance, in turn, may affect the marine seagrass ecosystems, which, by extension, could potentially also impact human health and animals that rely on seagrass habitats. The present thesis provided the means to research the hypothesis that land-based contaminants adversely impact the health of Australia’s resident green turtle populations. The following chapters in this thesis investigate the validity of this hypothesis. Valuable experimental toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic data are collected and described in Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 4 used data from Chapter 3 to develop tools to confirm the initial hypothesis. Overall, this thesis describes the development of tools to aid risk assessors and policymakers in setting safe chemical exposure levels for green sea populations., Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Environment and Sc, Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology, Full Text

The Government of Bonaire has requested WageningenMarine Research (WMR) to research the composition ofthe sand used to construct the artificial beach of the Chogogo Beach and Dive Resort. The major concern regarding the artificial sand was to evaluate whether the sand used could harm the marine park corals. The sand of the beach of Chogogo was sampled on the 10th of May 2022 and analyzed at the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ) for grain size and organic matter content. Additionally, the natural sand in front ofChogogo and several other places was sampled to better compare the sand that naturally occurs around Bonaire to the artificial sand. The results of the analysis and expert evaluation have provided the following responses to specific questions that have been raised.What are the potential effects on marine life, specifically corals, in relation to the constructed beach? There is already sand being transported into the adjacent sea. Corals may already be affected. If so, then stress onc orals will be increased. This will affect their metabolism ,influencing coral growth and health. Furthermore, a higher sediment load will lead to a higher cover of the bottom by sand and prevent coral recruits from settling. In the longer term, corals more sensitive to sediment will disappear from the location which may be exchanged for more stress-tolerant corals. Generally, these species are less important for maintaining the reef. However, if the sediment load is high (permanently or incidentally), the sea floor may become fully covered by sand, and all corals may disappear. Thus, it is important to monitor artificial beaches for breaks in the retention walls, accumulation of sand along the walls, and make adjustments when necessary. It is important to note that since corals are long-lived organisms, a short-term assessment, as presented within this report, can barely unravel the long-term quantitative impacts on the health of adjacent corals. Thus, long-term monito

The Working Group on Biological Effects of Contaminants (WGBEC) investigates the biological effects of contaminants in the marine environment. The group provides research and increases the understanding of contaminant interactions and effects, including the development of inte- grated biological effects monitoring strategies, which are used to support international research and monitoring. The WGBEC has contributed significantly to the implementation and harmonization of tech- niques that can be used to evaluate the biological effects of pollutants in national monitoring programmes. An overview of national effect-based monitoring programmes of Member States is provided with the aim to support European countries and Regional Seas Conventions on their implementation. A summary of the national effects-based monitoring programmes has been pro- vided by twelve European countries represented at the WGBEC meetings. The adoption of bio- logical effects monitoring can differ widely and comparisons between approaches and the choice of biological effects methods used acts as an important tool. A summary of the main findings is presented. Furthermore, OSPAR's Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication Committee (HASEC) has en- couraged contracting parties to perform targeted biological effects monitoring to enhance the assessment of contaminants in sediment and biota towards the OSPAR QSR2023. WGBEC mem- bers contributed to the integrated biological effects approach assessment by providing data from their national monitoring activities to produce maps and figures to enable interpretations. Revision of the biological effects methods, including new techniques and developments, and the quality assurance of existing methods are core activities for the WGBEC, which require continu- ous discussion and evaluation by the group. Activities include the production of new ICES TIMES documents as well as intercalibration exercises to ensure Member States are providing comparable data for natio