Potential use of Paracentrotus lividus as bioindicator for recent trace element pollution monitoring

The Mediterranean Sea is an enclosed basin, highly submitted to anthropogenic pressures. Chemical pollution originating from coastal urban centres and industries, or carried by air and rivers, will primarily affect its coastal ecosystems. The pollution by trace elements into the marine environment is rapidly evolving further to the recent modifications of their production and industrial uses by men. As a result, some trace elements that were previously poorly studied can be considered now as environmental pollutants, whose concentrations can sometimes be way above their natural baseline levels.
The purple sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus is a well know bioindicator used for metal pollution monitoring (Fe, Cd, Cr, Pb, Zn and Cu) along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. This sedentary organism successfully concentrates the pollutants diluted in its environment, and the measured concentrations reflect properly the health status of the ecosystem. This study is a first approach on the use of P. lividus as bioindicator for some less investigated trace elements (Al, V, Mn, Co, Ni, Se, Mo and Ag), chosen for their potential toxic effects. We have compared the element concentrations of the digestive tract tissues and gonads of female and male sea urchins. The organisms were frozen prior to dissection, or they were dissected alive, the two experimental procedures being compared afterwards. The existence of an eventual relationship between their gonadic index or their test diameter and the measured pollutant concentrations was also investigated.