The Goldschmidt conference 2020 highlighted the research of Dr. Ruoyu SUN from Tianjin University’s School of Earth System Science（SESS）on deep marine methylmercury and released a press to the public.

Press release by Goldschmidt Conference

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 materials 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 took place from 21-26 June.

Each year, scientists around the world submit researches and topics to the conference in advance. After being strictly evaluated by the committee, only those newsworthy, logically consistent as well as expressing rigorous scientific nature would be chosen for an elaborate press release.

Dr. Ruoyu Sun (first author, left) and Yi Liu (co-author, right) in front of research submersible@ Deep-sea warrior (Shenhai Rongshi)

The title of Dr. Ruoyu Sun’s presentation 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 by 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.

By the School of Earth System Science

Editor: Eva Yin