Biomonitors of coastal pollution with reference to the situation in the Mexican coasts: a review on the utilization of organisms

Abstract

Approximately, since four decades ago, the environmental monitoring began in the marine and coastal environments, utilizing organisms, usually bivalve molluscs as a strategy to know the degree of pollution that prevailed in such ecosystems. Thus, by means of the analysis of tissues have been established the bioavailability and the concentrations of contaminants introduced in such environments (e.g. heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, organochlorine compounds, etc.). Moreover of bivalve molluscs, there are different groups of organisms that have been used for such purposes, which have been demonstrated to have certain characteristics suitable for their utilization as biomonitors. However, mussels, oysters and clams constitute a group that meet much of these features, and, therefore, there is an increased number of papers in the literature about the use of this group of organisms. In Mexico, several research groups have also used this biomonitoring strategy to evaluate the contamination of the coastal zone; various species have been identified to be used as biomonitors (e.g., Crassostrea gigas, C. iridescens, C. corteziensis, C. palmula, C. virginica, Mytilus californianus, Mytella strigata, Megapitaria squalida, Chione californiensis, Rangia cuneata and Polymesoda caroliniana), however, still relatively few studies have been conducted (38 papers from 1998 to 2010 in the Elseviers Scopus database) and there are even areas of the coastal zone where such studies are inexistent.