How Mercury Gets Through This Food Chain

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A food chain is described as a “sequence of transfers of matter and energy in the form of food from organisms to organisms” (definition from www.britannica.com) However since most organisms eat many things, these food chains turn into food webs. For each ecosystems theres a different food chain/web.

For the bigger fish I used cod as an example.

In this food web, there are examples of three trophic levels. For this food web in the first trophic level is the algae. In the second trophic level there is bigger fish (cod in the diagram) For the third trophic level there are humans.

This is how the food web works:

First, the algae feed the bigger fish and minnows. Worms also feed both the bigger fish and minnows. Then the minnows feed the bigger fish. Then the bigger fish feed both humans and coyotes.

Mercury goes through this food web when the bigger fish get eaten by the humans. This causes mercury poisoning in humans and huge problems in fish.