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“Absolutely Every One” – 15 Out of 15 – Bluefin Tuna Tested In California Waters 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.
***
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:
That might be extreme, but the point is that fish exposed to radiation somewhere out in the ocean might end up in U.S. waters.
And see this.
CNN reports today:
Low levels of radioactive cesium from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident turned up in fish caught off California in 2011, researchers reported Monday.
The bluefin spawn off Japan, and many migrate across the Pacific Ocean. Tissue samples taken from 15 bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sources
The Wall Street Journal quotes the studies’ authors:
“The tuna packaged it up and brought it across the world’s largest ocean,” said marine ecologist Daniel Madigan at Stanford University, who led the study team. “We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.”
***
“We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium-134 and cesium-137,” said marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York state, who was part of the study group.
The bad news is that is is only going to get worse.
As Reuters points out:
Unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor.
Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms that have already taken it in ….
As CNN notes:
Neither [of the scientists who tested the fish] thought they were likely to find cesium at all, they said. And since the fish tested were born about a year before the disaster, “This year’s fish are going to be really interesting,” Madigan said.
“There were fish born around the time of the accident, and those are the ones showing up in California right now,” he said. “Those have been, for the most part, swimming around in those contaminated waters their whole lives.”
In other words, the 15 fish tested were only exposed the radiation for a short time. But bluefin arriving in California now will have been exposed to the Fukushima radiation for much longer.
As KGTV San Diego explains:
The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
One of the studies’ authors told the BBC:
The fish that will be arriving around now, and in the coming months, to California waters may be carrying considerably more radioactivity and if so they may possibly be a public health hazard.
Japanese and U.S. officials – of course – are pretending that the amount of radiation found in the bluefin is safe. But the overwhelming scientific consensus is that there is no safe level of radiation … and radiation consumed and taken into the body is much more dangerous than background radiation.
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All the children are insane. Waiting for the summer rain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4&feature=related
Your post is one of the things I like about ZH. It reminds me of when everybody's older brothers came home from the war with the bottom third of their duffel bags filled with export goods from Southeast Asia, the quality of which has not been experienced since; and a certain political cohesive zeitgeist, however fragile it was.
I don't post much because I have only been reading since 9/2010 (and I struggle with the nomenclature -- it's not likely I will ever be much of a day trader), but this blog does help to clarify immediate things: If you ever need a pair of shoes or a cast net, walcott, I can make them for you, without power tools.
and the FDA says ... nothing?
They already raised the safety levels of acceptable radiation when reactor 4 blew up, so now we're safe.
What part of this could have surprised the scientists? It was known that the radioactivity leking into the ocean dwarfs the the airborne contamination and it's known that fish swim and currents move. The only possible questions were the degree of dilution and how long it would take to get across the ocean.
Most particulate radioactivity would have sunk to the bottom (where Godzilla lives). Apparently, the radioactive Cesium is either more soluble in seawater or is a suspendible particulate (think smoke, only in water).
A big plus for fishing at night as these little guys are glowing!
Whole pacific is death now. You called it GW!!!
Japanese nuclear policy review melts down:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120529_33.html
Review of Japan's nuclear policy suspended
The Japan Atomic Energy Commission has decided to suspend a review of the country's nuclear policy guidelines currently being conducted by an expert panel.
In a meeting on Tuesday, some of the panelists expressed concerns over the selection of some of the panel, which includes members from power companies and research institutes that are promoting nuclear power.
The experts also criticized a working group set up by the commission. The working group compiled a report on the country's nuclear recycling policy in mid-May following the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. It later came to light that the unreleased draft report was distributed in closed door sessions to people involved in the government and in the power companies who were promoting nuclear power.
The expert panel said it is still not clear why the working group distributed the draft, and called for an investigation by a third-party. The panel strongly criticized the atomic energy commission.
The panel plans to come up with a review of the guidelines by this summer. The commission decided to temporarily halt its review of the guidelines and exclude from the panel any persons from the nuclear industry and research institutes promoting nuclear power.
The head of the commission, Shunsuke Kondo, said he plans to rethink the commission from scratch following the nuclear accident and try to recover public trust in the commission. The commission plans to draw up concrete proposals by the next meeting of the expert panel.
May 29, 2012 - Updated 12:01 UTC (21:01 JST)
since there is no safe level of radiation, there is no standard to declare tuna unsafe, scientific double talk (they get their money from government research)
Junkerz got no reedin' compreehenshun! :>D
we may be radiated but we're still active.
BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peHEOgiQgnI&feature=related
Let them eat (crab) cake.
What? Are you from Miami or something?
Very nice to see you still hanging around CC.
Thank you for your continued ZH presence.
Let them eat face!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/start-zombie-apocalypse-caught-tape
I think the Iranians are behind fukushima. Unleash the American freedom fighters with their embedded reporters!!
Really though, this is most depressing. How can we sit by and let this continue? Are we really that stupid to threaten our childrens future just so GE and some other crooked companies can make money building nuclear reactors?
Rhetorical question of the century.
There is a competitive solution to uranium based atomic energy.
Get informed!
http://energyfromthorium.com/
Sad!
Just really really sad.
Yes BR, we know you are easily and quickly swayed by incomplete and relative data supporting your emotional, political and financial desires.
Instead of personally attacking other bloggers, how about you provide sources and detailed explanations to support your belief that this data is incomplete?
There have been times that GW has posted information that was factually incorrect and he got called on it by people who did just that!
I enjoy CD writings, see no need to question his ethics, bad form.....
Statements of fact are not personal attacks. Or would you argue pointing out a lie is a personal attack?
GW's ethics should be questioned if he makes assertions without citing clear reference to the facts or science he claims; links to more of his rants don't cut it.
Btw, ClearEye, you must have old contacts in b/c I was referring to BR = Cognitive Dissonance = TBP
Centurion9.41 said:
WTF?
I not certain, but I think I'm being accused of being Barry Ritholtz (BR) of The Big Picture (TBP).
Too freaking funny. I hope Mrs. Cog doesn't find out because she dislikes BR
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/
Thank you for defending my honor, but I'm still trying to figure out who BR is. :)
As far as GW's article is concerned.....there is plenty of evidence to support GW's notion that Fuku fission by-products are entering the food chain. The only question is to what degree.
The only question is to what degree?....
Seriously, you make my point even more clear. There are far more than that one important question. But maybe not to people who look for data to fit their pre-concieved narrative....
remember the rat on the Genoese boat that brought the plague to Europe or the way it was re-exported to America? Small world, large amounts of human excrement in forms we couldn't even imagine. Our minds create sparkles that out-sparkle the stars, alas not always for the right reasons; but that's evolutuion. Until our timeline runs out! I don't play at being God I'm happy to be man.
The food chain can be poisoned in many ways, some are "softer" than others, thanks to man's "genius". You can't stop "progress".
On a short time-frame all tuna are dead. So are we.
Bottom line, is all edible and non edible species in the oeans, will be affected.
Tuna is just ONE thing we eat from the seas..........or USED to eat.
Now that's funny.
Turn this into a positive: Pre-cooked tuna. Easy to find in the dark. Find it in the Alkali
metals section at your friendly neighborhood grocery store.
Mmm! Mercury and Cesium? Maguro, anyone?
Why not.
Another overhyped, alarmist article by GW...
Okay genius, care to point out any hype at all?
As for alarmist, well, alarms can have value, if properly set.
Most of GW's articles irritate me for his ever clueless defense of statism (a.k.a. the entities that created this disaster ((a.k.a. the mafia)).
These articles though, are the opposite, and work to lessen the effect of the MSM memory-hole.
I still hope one day that GW will overcome this cognitive dissonance of using "evil" in hopes of accomplishing "good," as honestly, how long can one survive in this condtion while exposing their minds to constant reminders by those like myself?
That's like asking how rynak could for such prolonged time on the one hand be so outright pessimist, sarcastic and misanthropic.... yet at the same time refuse to become another slogan spamming doomer?
One word: Conditioning
People like this reinforces the belief in the theory of survival of the fittest. Dummies like this usually are the first to perish...
Bluefin tuna belly is Toro and the less fatty part is chutoro
No more for me.
The levels only rise from here and since contamination is normally distributed my luck would be to get that one put of a hundred 2+ standard deviation outlier because they arent testing it
Maguro is a generic term for tuna (sashimi quality) and can come from either bluefin or yellowfin (Ahi) tuna. Toro and chutoro specifically refer to the belly meat of bluefin. I love all of it, though toro is very expensive. For my money, Hamachi is better than both.
There's no way I'm going to stop eating sashimi and sushi...I guess I'll just have to cut back on other sources of radiation.
The farmed hamachi kona compache i believe it is called is mostly farmed in japanese waters. I aint touching the stuff
Wonder how many sport fishermen will be impacted by this as the story gets out.
Sushi anyone.
They're all throwbacks, now.
Not true. Still HUGE schools off of Cabo. Great Fishing.
The Bill Fish go back, of course, but the tuna was divine. Contaminants and all.
Fuck ... eat sushi and get cancer.
EDIT: Cesium information ....
Caesium-137 reacts with water producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide), and the biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium. After entering the body, caesium gets more or less uniformly distributed throughout the body, with higher concentration in muscle tissues and lower in bones. The biological half-life of caesium is rather short at about 70 days.[10] Experiments with dogs showed that a single dose of 3800 ?Ci/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 ?g/kg) is lethal within three weeks.[11]
CS-137 : half life 30 years
Fukushima uses mox plutonium which has other isotopes with halflifes over 10,000 years. But the MSM will only tell you about iodine and cesium.
Bioaccumulation. It's not going away. It's not going to get better.
Yup, even hypothetically assuming that said "3% above background" (since when is that stuff part of the background???) is "safe".... that was for 1 month exposure at the begin of the disaster..... fuckupshima has been leaking for how many months now?
Over a year. March 11, 2011.
Expected this.
Long ALREADY canned tuna
"Long ALREADY canned tuna"
Not a good idea. Because of the excessive amount of coal burned in China that lacks any pollution control equipment, the seafood has significant levels of mercury. Consumption of seafood should be restricted to about 2 meals a month to avoid serious long term health issues. Shellfish (bottom feeders) and preditors (shark, Swordfish, Tuna), should be avoided because contaiments build up in there bodies.
http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/product-specificinformation/seafood/f...
Mercury in almost all seafood is neutralized by selenium. In that form it is no more harmful than a few grains of play sand in your fish.
Just don't eat whale meat, where it is NOT complexed.
If mercury in seafood were toxic, everyone in Japan would die at 40 rather than having the most centigenarians per capita in the world. They eat quite a bit of fish, you see.