Cyanide fishing is a method of capturing fish that involves spraying a sodium cyanide solution on fish to stun and capture them and is routinely used by the marine aquarium trade. Cyanide fishing is illegal because it is destructive to the fish and to the habitat where they are found. Currently there is no reliable method to test if a fish has been caught with cyanide so the laws cannot be enforced. The thiocynate ion can be used as an indicator of cyanide exposure because the detoxification process involves conversion of cyanide to thiocynate. In a preliminary study, we demonstrate that we can detect thiocynate in the plasma of Amphiprion ocellaris (common clownfish) that were exposed to a 25 ppm cyanide solution for one minute using a reverse phase HPLC with a C30 column treated with polyethylene glycol and a UV detector operating at 220nm. Plasma samples were collected from the exposed fish at 1 hour, 4 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours and 96 hours post exposure, diluted and then injected onto the HPLC system to determine thiocynate concentration. Using first order kinetics, the half-life of the thiocynate was determined to be between 4 and 8 days, although due to spectral interference we did not observe SCN- in plasma beyond 4 days post exposure. In the current study we will again expose Amphiprion ocellaris to cyanide, but precipitate the proteins in the plasma using cold acetonitrile prior to injection to improve our detection limit. By determining the half-life of the thiocynate in the plasma of fish exposed to cyanide it can be determined how long the test can be used post cyanide exposure.

Determining the half-life of thiocynate in amphiprion ocellaris plasma upon potassium cyanide exposure

255th National Meeting (2018)

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