Is our sustainably harvested wild fish safe or is it contaminated with PCB's and mercury?
We want to eat the most healthful and delicious food available. When we purchase our own food and prepare it ourselves we have more control of the quality of the ingredients. We know that omega-3 fatty acids are essential to our health and we can only get them from the food we eat.1 Regarding wild fish, an excellent source of omega-3's, we can eat fish that has been harvested using sustainable practices rather than ingest supplements derived by way of trawling known to be a leading cause of overfishing in our oceans. Around every corner there seems to be a new obstacle in our path to food and health lifestyle balance. How do we know if our wild sustainable seafood is safe to eat?
The lowest reported levels of contaminants in wild fish are found in small feeder fish that eat mostly microscopic organisms and/or vegetable based diets of plankton and seaweeds. Many feeder fish, so called because other fish eat these smaller species, are harvested by trawlers moving about the world's oceans taking all they can harvest for sale to fish product producers to make meal and oil. Although meal and oil are of comparatively low value to harvesters they are used to make extremely valuable products such as supplements, farmed fish food, pet food, flavor additives and more. It is becoming increasingly harder to consume wild feeder species such as sardines, capelin, herring, smelt, anchovies and mackerel that are the result of a low environmental impact harvest. Consuming feeder fish is considered safe as they have the lowest levels of mercury, PCB's and selenium.
When you chose to avoid buying and consuming products made from trawled fish or you don't like feeder fish, eating the next fish up the food chain is an ideal way to avoid mercury, PCB's and other contaminants in fish if you know how to select the best fish. The best low impact wild fish eat the feeder fish directly and have a relatively short lifespan to maturity. These include salmon, sablefish and haddock because they have a lifespan of 9-10 years on average. Most seafood contaminants are accumulated over time and older fish have more contaminants than younger fish. Adult fish less than 10 years old have fewer contaminants than their longer living adult cousins, halibut, rockfish, and tuna. Older fish have thicker fillets than younger ones. One can avoid older halibut, rockfish and tuna by selecting smaller thinner fillets that have not been cut across their grain once filleted. Cod, pollack and lingcod live for 15-25 years. While they are primarily harvested by trawlers ling cod is commonly caught as a bycatch of the hook and line salmon troll fishery. There remains a large established fleet of hook and line harvesters targeting salmon, sablefish, halibut, rockfish and tuna. the only way to confirm hook and line harvest is to purchase from a purveyor specialized in low impact harvest seafood or to confirm the gear type with your seafood source provider. Did you know US domestic ocean caught fish contain less contaminants than fresh water fish?
PCB and mercury contaminants come primarily from ground water run off. Nearly 50% of America's fresh water lakes contain seafood with higher than acceptable levels of these contaminants based on recommended guidelines produced by the EPA and the FDA. Results from the National Lake Fish Tissue Study indicate that mercury, PCBs, and dioxins and furans are widely distributed in lakes and reservoirs in the lower 48 states. Mercury and PCBs were detected in all the fish samples collected from the 500 sampling sites.3 If you eat gamefish, such as lake trout,
steelhead, walleye, and bass, eat the smaller,
younger fish (within legal limits). They
are less likely to contain harmful levels of
pollutants than larger, older fish. Eat freshwater panfish [feeder fish cooked whole in a pan] such as bluegill, perch, stream [as they have lower concentrations of harmful pollutants than other fresh water fish].2
Now that we understand which fish are safest to eat, let's consider the impact on our lives if we continue to allow the oceans to be a reservoir for pollutants like plastic and contaminated ground water runoff. Over the past 50 years, our oceans have changed a great deal. There are vast islands of plastic debris contributing to the increased mortality rate of wild fish due to the accumulation of micro plastics in the water caused by the breakdown of larger plastics. The future of our wild fish is increasingly more vulnerable. Otolith and other purveyors and harvesters who promote awareness understand that our access to superior wild fish is threatened. We sustain our economy today while selling and harvesting less fish because the demand for great seafood is higher than its availability. We assess a premium price for our low impact harvest expertly handled seafood and use our business as a platform to encourage more people to support legislation, behavior and harvesters that are sustainable and promote cleaner oceans and improved accountability. We harvest less today than we did 25 years ago. If the volume of low impact seafood were to continue to reduce over the next 25 years then the resulting fish would cost twice as much. It would be consumed by fewer individuals and even if every one of those consumers pledged all of their effort to make a positive change in the interest of cleaner and more abundant seafood the tide may well turn indefinitely without increased action today. Democracy is not an affective tool to make change for the better where the number of persons interested are fewer than the majority. The peril of permitting our oceans to become imbalance due to pollutants is that the damage once complete may take hundreds of years to recover. We cannot afford to loose this opportunity to protect the quality and quantity of delicious seafood available to the world. Wild seafood is the most abundant resource of seafood in the world. Most of the farmed fish species available depend on wild seafood stocks to feed their farmed product. The balance of our quality of life remains threatened. Our actions are important and the significance of our dedication must not be understated.
1. Univ of Maryland Medical Center: Omega-3 Fatty Acids, http://www.umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty-acids
2. EPA: [Office of Science and Technology] (4305T) 823-F-14-002
October 2014.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents/english_updated_fishbrochure.pdf
3. EPA: 823-R-09-006 September 2009, The National Study of Chemical Residues in Lake Fish Tissue https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents/fish-study-summary-2009.pdf
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