Preliminary assessment of mercury, arsenic and selenium content in fish from Batam Island Indonesia

High anthropogenic activity in Batam could be causing alteration to Batam marine ecosystem and living organism, such as fishes. In the present article, we present preliminary information on mercury concentration in fish. Up to five teen species of fish were caught from fisherman fish collector in Batam. The highest concentration of Hg was found in kakap putih fish muscle (0.22 μ/g) and the lowest was found in belanak fish muscle (0.02 μ/g). All of the fish samples were not exceeding the permissible guideline. The highest arsenic and selenium concentration were found in tembang fish muscle and sonang fish muscle (9.82 μ/g and 5.43 μ/g), respectively, and the lowest concentration of Se was found both in kakap putih fish muscle (1.92 μ/g and 3.39 μ/g), respectively. Arsenic content in all samples were exceeding permissible guideline by SNI. This data have used as a preliminary data for heavy metals concentration in fish from Batam Island, Indonesia. Regular monitoring might have needed to see the trends of contaminants.