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The objective of this study was to determine the contents of elements in zooplankton from the Northern Gulf of California in June 2008, to characterize the associations of elements, as well as typical patterns of spatial distribution of concentrations of elements in zooplankton. The zooplankton samples were collected by Bongo nets (333 ?m mesh, 60 cm mouth diameter) from near the bottom to the surface on shallow stations or from 200 m depth to the surface in the sites deeper than 200 m and immediately frozen until being processed in the laboratory. Defrozen samples were washed by deionised water, dried in the oven at 60°C and homogenized in an agate mortar. After total digestion of dried samples by a hot mixture of concentrated strong acids the concentrations of more than 50 major and trace elements were measured in final solutions using high resolution ICP-MS spectrometry. The obtained data set was processed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation. The results of PCA allowed to distinguish several associations of elements of different origin (terrigenous, atmospheric, anthropogenic and marine biogenic). Typical spatial distributions of representative elements of each group were constructed and compared with spatial distributions of their contents of the surficial sediments of the Gulf of California. The terrigenous element Fe displayed accumulation in both zooplankton and the coastal sediments of the Baja California peninsula in front of Puertecitos, on the western coast of the Northern Gulf of California. Barium, being of marine biogenic origin, had its higher content in highly dynamic and very productive area between Angel de la Guarda and Tiburon islands. The lanthanides, being in the group of terrigenous elements, had different than North America Shale composite normalized pattern, displayed positive europium anomaly in most of the zooplankton samples.

Palabras clave: zooplankton; Northern Gulf of California; element contents; spatial distributions

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