Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed Pacific to U.S.

Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

See: Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed Pacific to U.S.

 

Scary ... we all need portable Geiger counters when we shop for food or go fishing.

 

This might be a good year to consume only Atlantic fish or fish from south of the Equator if in the Pacific region. Fish from Gulf of Mexico still worries me.

 

Unless your a teenager hoping to have children in the future don't worry about it. By the time your in your 40's a little radiation won't kill you any faster than old age. Your going to die from something anyway.

 

I am so old I only worry for my sushi loving kids.