The establishment of sustainable coastal industries requires better temporal and spatial monitoring of heavy metal (HM) pollutants, even at low concentrations and during pulse-release events, before their accumulation becomes hazardous for local ecosystems or for the use of seawater in desalination (for drinking water). Foraminifera, unicellular marine organism, build their shells by sequential addition of chambers made of calcite, which contains impurities reflecting the composition of the growth medium. Therefore, the chemical composition of each chamber reflects HM in the ambient water at the time of calcification. To test the applicability of single-chamber analyses of foraminifera shells as a tool for HM monitoring in seawater, we conducted culturing experiments to calibrate the relationship of zinc and lead in foraminiferal shells and the ambient seawater. Two species of the cosmopolitan genus Amphistegina were cultured under a range of concentrations of both metals and two temperatures. We show that concentrations of zinc and lead in shells increase linearly with metal concentration in seawater with no difference between species and no effect of temperature. Our experiments further show that the concentrations in seawater can be directly inferred from concentrations in the shells at least up to the levels representing chronic pollution for both metals (68 ug/L for Zn and 8 ug/L for Pb). Combined with their high abundances in all marine environments and good preservation of their shells in sediments, our results demonstrate that foraminifera represent a powerful natural recording system offering high spatial and temporal resolution, allowing the establishment of historical baselines and detection of confined or short-term events of HM release, which could escape traditional monitoring methods.

建立可持续的沿海产业需要对重金属（HM）污染物进行更好的时空监测，即使在低浓度下以及在脉冲释放事件期间，也要在污染物积累对当地生态系统或海水淡化（用于饮用）造成危害之前进行监测水）。单孔海洋生物有孔虫通过依次添加由方解石制成的腔室来构建它们的壳，该腔室包含反映生长培养基组成的杂质。因此，每个腔室的化学成分在钙化时反映了周围水中的HM。为了测试有孔虫壳的单室分析作为海水中HM监测工具的适用性，我们进行了培养实验，以校准有孔虫壳和周围海水中锌和铅之间的关系。国际化的两种两栖类在一定范围的两种金属浓度和两种温度下进行培养。我们表明，壳中锌和铅的浓度随海水中金属浓度的增加而线性增加，而种间无差异且不受温度影响。我们的实验进一步表明，可以从贝壳中的浓度直接推断出海水中的浓度，至少可以达到代表两种金属长期污染的水平（锌为68 ug / L，铅为8 ug / L）。结合其在所有海洋环境中的高丰度以及对沉积物中贝壳的良好保存，我们的结果表明，有孔虫是一种功能强大的自然记录系统，具有很高的时空分辨率，可以建立历史基线并检测狭窄或短期HM释放事件