Heavy metals deposited in water by different way and reach in human body through food chain and food web. Plankton is prime source of food for aquatic organism.
I am afraid that is not so simple. In your case, your problem is to be sure that what you will get in the filter is only phytoplankton, with no particulate matter. This will be sure for open ocean, but you talk about estuary where you must have a mix of phytoplankton and particulate matter from river or resuspension. This is very common, unless your river bring very clear freshwater. Clearly there is no method adapted to separate phytoplankton and particulate matter during sampling. What you can do is to collect various samples along the estuary, analyse trace metals but also perform analyses that will give you an idea of the variation of organic matter content like organic carbon and nitrogen or d13C and d15N (as a signature of their origin).
You are right Piotr. I was more specifically talking about the phytoplankton. The zooplankton can be separated by net without trouble. The problem is for phytoplankton, which started at 5-6 microns. If you use this last size to separate phytoplankton from particulate matter (below 5 microns let's say), there is lot of chance that part of the small phytoplankton collected on the net (or filters) is sticked with particulate matter. According me, the best way is to separate both fraction: below 5-6 microns and between 5-6 and 0.4 (or 0.2). Then you can assume that the last one is only particulate matter, and look at the differences. The other way is like you say, taking phytoplankton below 10 microns only. But here again, since the work must be done on estuary, I don't know what can be the proportion of large particles.
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