Silver in the World Ocean

A.R. Flegal

Environmental Toxicology, WIGS

University of California, Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, CA 95064

A preliminary view of the global distribution of silver in the world ocean has been derived. This has been accomplished with analyses of samples collected from the South Atlantic Ocean during the third cruise of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) Global Investigation of Pollutants in the Marine Environment (GIPME). It was preceded by IOC cruises in the equatorial and subarctic waters of the Atlantic and by preliminary measurements of silver in the Pacific by other investigators. Since all used comparable trace metal techniques the data are comparable. These initial data indicate that silver is cycled through the world ocean as a nutrient-type element. Vertical profiles of silver are often intermediate to those of copper and silicate. However, anthropogenic inputs of may contribute to relatively elevated concentrations of silver in some oceanic surface waters, as they do in neritic and estuarine waters in the northeast Pacific and freshwater systems in North America.