Recent data to back up our claim

We are claiming that plants growing in foggy areas on the coast have more methylmercury in them than plants from inland, non-foggy areas due to the fact that fog collects and distributes methylmercury from the ocean to the land. So, this quarter, some students are collecting more lace lichen (Ramalina menzeisii) samples for a different project, sequencing the genome of lichen. The students collected lichen from Ano Nuevo and Greyhound Rock, two sites within 200 yards of the crashing surf, and from Blue Oak Ranch in the Diablo Mountain Range, 60 miles inland from the sea (see figure above).

The graph below shows the % methylmercury (MMHg) as fraction of total mercury in these samples. It is easy to see that samples from the coastal sites have a much higher proportion of total mercury as methylmercury compared to the inland sites. Remember, methylmercury is the really toxic form. The BOR is Blue Oak Ranch (inland site) has much less methylmercury than AN (Ano Nuevo) and GR (Greyhound Rock), both coastal sites.

Results like these tell us that the atmosphere plays an important role in determining the amount of mercury in plants and lichen. The atmosphere could be shuttling the mercury from the ocean to land and our research hopes to determine the magnitude of this.