## 4 Discussion
### Linking Hg Contamination, Climate Change Stressors, and Potential Impacts on Seafood Safety  
When assessing the risk to human health through seafood consumption and having in mind the levels of THg and the prevalence of Hg in this food item, it is imperative to restrict Hg dietary intake below certain levels. For this purpose, the European Food Safety Authority established an Hg tolerable weekly intake of 4 ug-kg-1 bw [4]. According to the present data, under the predicted climate change stressors, higher HQs (often above one) are expected in large pelagic fish with warming, augmenting the risk of harmful effects to human health [53], especially through the consumption of pelagic predatory species occupying high trophic levels and migrating species, like black scabbard fish, tuna, and tope shark. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [29], the bioaccumulation of Hg and other persistent organic pollutants is expected to increase with climate change [37]. Indeed, some authors estimated through data modeling that marine organisms from the top of the food web will accumulate higher MeHg levels in the future [31; 32], mostly due to increased Hg methylation rates by microorganisms, which will subsequently facilitate the availability of MeHg in the marine environment [10]. If the climate continues to change as projected, seafood safety will be likely compromised [29] and, thus, European consumers may have the reinforced interest in favoring the consumption of species occupying lower trophic levels instead of pelagic predatory ones, given the generally lower levels found in the literature for this group. Coastal indigenous communities with high seafood consumption frequencies, especially of large top predatory fish, will be particularly vulnerable to Hg dietary exposure and to the health hazards that result [29; 37] from the exposure to this neurotoxic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic contaminant [15; 16; 29]. Special attention should be paid to specific population groups like the elderly, pregnant women, and children, in which health hazards may be particularly deleterious. Interactive Effects of Hg and Climate Change-Related Stressors on Animal Condition and Neuro-Oxidative Responses  
In addition to the aforementioned consequences to seafood safety, both chemical contamination and climate effects can have profound ecological impacts in marine ecosystems, substantially affecting marine species' physiological and cellular functioning [24; 26; 79; 80; 81]. Yet, little is still known regarding the potential interactions between environmental stressors, which can translate either to an enhancement of negative effects or to their attenuation [81]. In this way, the present study provides relevant and novel insights into the neuro-oxidative implications of Hg exposure in benthic fish species in tomorrow's ocean. Among the studies assessing the effects of climate change stressors on marine biota, survival is one of the most used response variables [72]. Despite the physiological impairments induced by the studied stressors, fish were able to cope with and overcome stress as it did not result in mortality during the timeframe of the trial. It can also be argued that exposure to the tested multistressor levels, despite being chronic, was within the sublethal effect range. Another ecotoxicological endpoint frequently used in studies focused on climate change effects is growth and, thus, animal condition, which reflects the relationship between animal length and weight (e.g., References [70; 79; 82]). The prevalence of this endpoint in these studies is mostly because abiotic variables, like seawater temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and salinity, affect the marine biota's metabolism and the way energy acquired through feed ingestion is channeled toward different biological functions.