“Absolutely Every One” – 15 Out of 15 – Bluefin Tuna Tested In California Waters Contaminated with Fukushima Radiation
California Fish Contaminated with Fukushima Radiation
We noted more than a year ago:The ocean currents head from Japan to the West Coast of the U.S.
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Of course, fish don’t necessarily stay still, either. For example, the Telegraph notes that scientists tagged a bluefin tuna and found that it crossed between Japan and the West Coast three times in 600 days:
Japanese radiation found in bluefin tuna off the coast of California
May 29, 2012 – CALIFORNIA - For
the first time, scientists have detected radioactivity in fish that
have migrated into California waters from the ocean off Japan, where
radiation contaminated the sea after explosions tore through the
Fukushima nuclear reactors last year. Radioactive cesium was detected in
samples of highly prized Pacific bluefin tuna, but it is well below
levels considered unsafe for humans, the scientists say. The evidence is
“unequivocal” that the tuna – caught off San Diego a year ago –
were contaminated with radiation from Japan’s nuclear disaster, the
researchers said. Virtually all bluefin tuna on the market in the United
States is either farmed or caught far from the Fukushima area, so
American consumers should not be affected by radiation contamination in
their fish, seafood distributors say. The migratory bluefin studied by
the researchers were all caught by sport fishermen and were not headed
for the market. Daniel J. Madigan, a marine ecologist at Stanford’s
Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove (Monterey County), Nicholas
Fisher, a marine scientist internationally known as a specialist in
radiation hazards at Stony Brook University on Long Island, and Zophia
Baumann, a staff scientist in Fisher’s laboratory, reported their
discovery Monday in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. The finding was wholly unexpected, Madigan
said. It came about when he was researching the migratory patterns of
bluefin tuna as part of a broader study of Pacific fish migration. The
young tuna, averaging about 13 pounds apiece, were found to be
contaminated with two radioactive forms of the element cesium. Isotopes
called cesium-134 and cesium-137 do not exist in nature but are produced
only in nuclear explosions such as the weapons tests of the Cold War
era. Before the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, low levels of the
radioactive cesium-137 , which decays to harmlessness only over
thousands of years, had been measured in Japanese waters, while the
shorter-lived cesium-134 was undetectable, the scientists said. That
difference, they said, was crucial in concluding that the radioactive
contamination was linked to the Fukushima disaster. Increased
concentrations of radioactivity contaminated nearly 60,000 square miles
of the ocean off Japan after workers at Fukushima pumped thousands of
tons of seawater over reactors last year to prevent a complete meltdown
of the reactor cores. –SF Gate
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