Study shows coastal water, not sediment, predicts mercury contamination

Mercury released into the air through industrial pollution is turned into its most toxic form, methylmercury, in coastal sediment, streams and oceans. The Dartmouth-UConn team studied 10 estuaries from New Jersey's Hackensack Meadowlands to the Gulf of Maine. They found that methylmercury concentrations in the water, not the sediment, predicted methylmercury concentrations in killifish and Atlantic silversides, and that concentrations were higher in these forage fish than in bottom-feeding worms. Concentrations in sediment only predicted contamination levels in the worms.
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-coastal-sediment-mercury-contamination.html#nwlt