The Goldschmidt conference 2020 highlighted the research of Dr. Ruoyu SUN on deep marine methylmercury and released a press to the public. The Goldschmidt conference is the world’s main geochemistry conference, hosted by the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry. Held annually, it covers such material as climate change, astrobiology, planetary and stellar development and conditions, chemistry of Earth materials, pollution, the undersea environment, volcanoes, and many other subjects. For 2020 the scheduled Hawaii congress has been moved online, and takes place from 21-26 June, see https://goldschmidt.info/2020/index.
Each year, scientists around the world submit researches and topics to the conference in advance. After being strictly evaluated by the committee, only those are newsworthy, logically consistent as well as expressing rigorous scientific nature would be chosen for an elaborate press release. The presentation title of Ruoyu Sun is <Marinana Trench Fauna Accumulate Methylmercury Produced in Upper Oceans>, which used mercury isotopes in Marinana/Yap trench fauna to track the sources and transport pathways of deep marine methylmercury. The exploration and sampling of deep-sea environments were performed using submersible and lander manufactured by China. The press release also reported the presentation < Contrasting Hg Isotope Ratios from the Kermadec and Mariana Trenches > of Prof. Joel D. Blum, member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Coincidently, Joel also studied the mercury isotopes in Marinana trench fauna, and obtained similar dataset.
Press release by Goldschmidt Conference
Ruoyu Sun (first author, left) and Yi Liu (co-author, right) in front ofresearch submersible@ Deep-sea warrior (Shenhai Rongshi)
1. EurekAlert!┃AAAS, original press release by Goldschmidt Conference
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/gc-hms061920.php
2. Selected other international media
(1) DailyMail, UK
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8448223/Toxic-man-mercury-pollution-discovered-deepest-ocean.html]
(2) Newsweek, USA
[https://www.newsweek.com/mercury-pollution-humans-bottom-worlds-deepest-trench-1512549]
