still more on mercury in albacore....

[Nofish]

Another followup about the ongoing saga to determine mercury levels in our "local" albacore. You might want to check out this website: http://www.albatuna.com/ This is a site dedicated to educating consumers about albacore - pretty cool site.

Here's what was in this week's Fishlink Sublegals:

9:02/03. CALL TO DIFFERENTIATE MERCURY LEVELS AMONG TYPES OF ALBACORE: While the study on contaminants in farmed salmon, appearing in the 9 January issue of Science (see 9:02/01 above), sought to differentiate the levels of PCBs in farmed and wild salmon, no similar studies have been conducted to differentiate levels of mercury in fish of the same species, and in many instances of the same family. Elevated levels of methylmercury found in some fish have raised health concerns about consumption of these fish (see Sublegals, 8:21/05; 8:19/07; 8:09/06; 7:20/11; 7:14/07; 7:08/04; 7:07/05; 7:06/07; 6:17/12; 6:08/21; 6:06/12; 6:04/05; 5:01/01; 3:16/13). In response to a proposed U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) advisory on albacore tuna, the Western Fishboat Owners Association (WFOA) asked the FDA to implement an immediate testing regime on volunteer albacore fishermen and family members who eat large amounts of the fish (see Sublegals, 8:22/11). The association, which represents U.S., Canadian, New Zealand and Pacific Island nation albacore troll fishermen, has also contracted with a scientific laboratory to conduct mercury testing on an extensive sample of troll caught albacore (the samples used were documented as to catch area, freezing and handling methods, size and weight).

"No one has made any attempt to distinguish between mercury levels in different sizes of albacore tuna. The surface-caught albacore predominately caught by the U.S., Japanese, Canadian, Spanish, and New Zealand fishermen are smaller 5kg - 10kg fish, which generally have lower levels than in the older, larger albacore caught in deep waters. The large canners prefer to buy and work with larger fish, so they are understandably unlikely to point out the merits of small surface-caught albacore. WFOA believes that ALL tuna and tuna-like species having mercury levels far below the FDA guideline of 1.0 ppm [parts-per-million] and the Canadian guideline of .5 ppm, are far better sources of nutrients than a vast number of food products on the market," WFOA said in a written statement. "WFOA will support efforts to identify and reduce man-made sources of mercury that pose a risk to future seafood safety. Mercury pollution is a concern for all of us, but we can only solve it by addressing sources, not by food scares and hysteria. Efforts would be better spent on public education about sources of pollution in our food supply…." For more information, call (707) 443-1098 or go to: http://www.wfoa-tuna.org .