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Ocean fish and heavy metals make news:
Government warnings about consumption of wild fish present an opportunity
for fish farmers and aquaculture.
Senior Biologist and Certified Fisheries Professional Fisheries Technology Associates,Inc.
A lot has been said and written lately about the dangers of eating ocean fish.
If you’ve missed it, the heavy metal mercury has once again been in the headlines
as a health concern. Given the encouragement we’ve been receiving over the
past many years to eat more fish, this latest pronouncement was almost inevitable
(from the perspective of someone who understands the potential risk).
We are now told that eating fatty ocean fishes such as tuna and mackerel can be
potentially dangerous, given the elevated levels of mercury that tend to accumulate
in tissues of these species. Mercury, of course, can be toxic, causing significant neurological disease. To my surprise, Pacific salmon such as pink and sockeye are
specifically not included in the list. But that’s another issue (a function of politics? conclusion based on science?).
Hearing that toxic dangers lurk in our twenty-first century oceans is not news.
Neither is the marketing opportunity that once again befriends fish farmers
and the rest of the aquaculture community. That is truly what we are presented
with here. Make no mistake about it.
I don’t fault the federal government for issuing a warning. Augmenting the warning
with ways to protect ourselves would have been appreciated and appropriate.
Their suggestion to limit consumption makes sense, but is mildly confusing in light
of previous urgings for us to eat more fish of all kinds. I guess the task of clarifying
all of this falls to others, such as me.
Aquaculture has always been about environmental control, and therefore control
of product quality. That’s one of the founding principles on which aquaculture was
first developed. Fish farmers know this because we’ve heard it during our entire aquaculture careers.
I’m speculating, but maybe we sometimes miss opportunities because certain facts
become second nature. We know and understand them so completely that we take
them for granted—as if, because to us they are so intuitive, everyone should know
what we know without our telling them. Nothing could be further from the truth!
People in general, and Americans in particular, have short attention spans. And
information or conclusions that may be intuitive to us as fisheries professional require
a focused and concerted effort in education before these concepts become incorporated into the population. This is not a criticism, it’s simply human nature.
We are chronically distracted by other issues that carry greater importance or
higher priority. The fact that aquaculture is the way fish are being, and will be, produced (to the benefit of people AND the environment) is not new to us.
Just keep in mind that most people still don’t even know that aquaculture exists,
let alone that it can be their salvation from exposure to toxic pollution.
This is just one more opportunity to educate the public.
When the federal government lays a gift in in the laps of fish farmers,
we need to accept it, seize the opportunity, and run with it. This doesn’t
require some massive group effort, although that certainly could be part of
a larger strategy. Every producer can incorporate, to their distinct individual
benefit, governmental advice and cautions about ocean fish into their marketing
campaign.
By Bill Manci
Published: 3/17/2005
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