**7. Cispatá Bay**

For this coastal ecosystem, Burgos-Núñez *et al.* [15] reported that the bay of Cispatá-Colombia has been affected by chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, domestic wastewater, and spillage of substances such as hydrocarbons and heavy metals; These reasons were enough for them to determine the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals present in the tropical marine ecosystem of this bay (**Table 4**).

The results allowed us to observe that Hg concentrations increased with the trophic level in environments with very low levels of this metal, indicating bioaccumulation in the Cispatá Bay ecosystem. The distribution of Hg in the food web was: sediments < fish < birds. Seabirds can tolerate high concentrations of Hg, due to their ability to demethylate Hg in the liver and then store it as inorganic Hg [15, 16]. Lucia *et al.* [17] pointed out that the feathers in birds serve to excrete excess metals such as Hg; However, Tsipoura *et al.* [18] assured that concentrations higher than 5.0 μg Hg g−1 could impair the reproductive performance of birds.


## **Table 4.**

*Concentrations of THg in sediments, fish, and birds of the Bay of Cispatá-Colombia.*
