The Juan Fernández fur seal, once thought extinct, can ingest cadmium without ill effects – though no one knows how
A creature that humans came very close to obliterating now offers hope that we may be able to find ways to tackle one of the most pernicious environmental poisons, say scientists.levels of cadmium, as well as other metallic pollutants, without ill effects.is the second smallest species of fur seal and lives only on the Juan Fernández archipelago and one or two nearby islands in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile.
in detail recently – making some startling discoveries in the process. “We collected samples of their faeces and found they contained extremely high levels of cadmium and other elements such as mercury,” said Constanza Toro-Valdivieso of Cambridge University’s conservation research institute. Apart from the seals’ unexpected ability to tolerate high levels of cadmium, there was also a puzzle about its source. “The soil on the island is low in cadmium and so is the water around it,” said Toro-Valdivieso. “So where was the cadmium coming from, we wanted to know?”
In doing so, the seals would have to travel through the South Pacific gyre, a huge, rotating ocean current in which all sorts of debris gets trapped. “It is here they are most likely to come in contact with cadmium,” said Toro-Valdivieso, who has been studying the species for several years. The debris swept into the gyre includes man-made polymers containing cadmium, it is speculated, and this is being picked up by fish and squid and then ingested by the seals.
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