A fish story
The Mexican Pacific tuna fleet… the largest in the Americas… set out early Sunday, the closed season for tuna fishing in Mexican waters having ended at one minute past midnight on Sunday. This years harvest is expected to be in the neighborhood of 133,000 metric tons of fish, a huge drop from the 145,000 tons taken annually in the mid 2000s.
Prices will be higher, and no telling yet what the Fukishima disaster has done to Pacific fishing stocks. I don’t know if was stupid or not to stock up on canned tuna at the Soriana last week or not. Especially when I just live around the corner from the city fish market in a major fishing town, who will have uncanned — and, one hopes, not irradiated — tuna for a lot less in a few days:
The atoms that make up the runoff from the Japanese reactor are dangerous but they also have some quirks that make them something of a lottery. Number one, they are big in size, a high atomic number and they do not pass into our cells with the ease say a sodium atom might-we tend to pass them. The system the fish enjoy react the same. Should you keep a particle in your system it would cause real damage but the odds are low, lower than getting lit up by a bolt of lighting. Eat the fresh fish, we are exposed to bits of radiation 24/7 our whole lives, we’re designed for dealing with a great deal of radiation on a daily basis. You are aware of the distortion the media puts out every day, this subject is no different-word count pays the bills, we all have to eat.
Here, here, Norm. I was going to add only that reading the marine science journals from West Coast N.A. universities, aquariums, and laboratories is essential to separate the subject matter from the noise. La Niña/El Niño, as well as overfishing, have more to do with reductions.
Well, yeah. I only mentioned Fukishima (and concerns about radioactivity in food fish) as an “issue” in the tuna industry. I’m probably contributing to the overfishing, being a big tuna consumer… but I haven’t started glowing in the dark… yet.