J.L. Stauber, ... S. Apte, in Marine Ecotoxicology, 2016 The need to understand marine ecotoxicology from a multiple stressor perspective (eg, the interplay between multiple contaminants and climate change) is highlighted throughout this chapter.
The final section describes future possibilities and probabilities for use of marine toxicity testing in ecotoxicology. This includes use of toxicity testing for assessing the impacts of climate change and associated ocean acidification.
Marine ecotoxicology provides, as discussed in Section 9.2.2, information on potential adverse effects of stressors. This information provides for knowledge-based decision-making by nonscientists ( Fig. 9.1) relative to risk management decisions. Once risk management decisions have been made, their effectiveness needs to be assessed.
Although polychaetes are widely used in marine ecotoxicology, current end points focus mainly on adult physiological and biochemical changes. This led to the suggestion of a toolbox for polychaete ecotoxicology (Lewis and Watson 2012) focusing more on reproductive traits and not only on classical biomarkers.