Toxic Roulette and the Revenge of the Fish
The Facts Many Do Not Want to Hear About Eating Fish
By Captain Paul Watson
It looks like the fish are turning the tables on
humanity. Not by choice but because ecological
realities have boomeranged back upon humankind.
Tins of tuna fish now contain warnings that the
product should not be eaten by pregnant women or young
children because of high levels of mercury and other
toxic heavy metals. The tuna companies and the
government have decided that men and non-pregnant
women are expendable. Anything to protect the unborn
fetus, of course. After were born, were on our own
to play toxic roulette.
Farm raised salmon contain antibiotics, growth
hormones and even a dye to color the flesh a pleasing
pink while still alive.
Long living fish like halibut, cod, orange roughy and
swordfish contain large amounts of heavy metals. When
you can live over a century like a halibut, you
accumulate decades of toxins. When you live high up on
the food chain, you build up mercury and other heavy
metals.
Orcas in the Pacific Northwest are the most chemically
contaminated animals in the world. Beluga whales in
the St. Lawrence are treated as toxic waste when they
die.
We treat the oceans like sewers and then act surprised
that the fish that is eaten is polluted.
If you flushed your toilet through your refrigerator
every morning, dousing all your food with fecal
material and urine, would you then have that food for
lunch or dinner?
Humans can be willfully blind and deliberately
ignorant when it comes to food. We would never eat a
piece of fish sitting in a bowl of mercury, arsenic
and PCBs garnished with a lump of human fecal
material on top. Yet when the lump of crap is brushed
off and the toxins washed away, we serve that lump of
sautéed toxic fish flesh up without a thought of what
has penetrated the cells of the meat.
The federal government of Canada has just allocated
$190,000 to investigate the impact of traditional fish
diets on West coast native communities.
Canadian Inuit have exceptionally high levels of toxic
contaminants in their bodies because of their
traditional reliance on whales and seals. The study
currently being undertaken on Canadas West coast will
reveal how high the level of contaminants are among
Pacific Northwest First Nations.
I predict that the study will reveal that over 100
West coast aboriginal communities are indeed facing a
crisis of increasing levels of toxicity in the fish
they eat.
This crisis is not one created by the activities of
most Native people but is the consequence of mining,
logging, sewage, manufacturing and salmon farming.
Clear-cutting, agricultural run-off and mine tailings
are actions that invite ecological consequences.
The chemical stew includes dioxins, furans, PCBs,
flame retardants and DDT, mercury, arsenic and lead,
all of which can accumulate in the bodies of humans
and animals.
Quatsino First Nation Chief Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi, who
was raised in the traditional style on the northwest
tip of the island, said in a recent interview that in
a recent seven-day period, she ate salmon and crab on
four of the days.
Unfortunately for the Chief and her people this is no
longer a healthy diet.
On the other side of the world in the Faeroe Islands
about halfway between Iceland and Scotland, the level
of mercury toxicity in the brains of Faeroese children
is the highest in the world. Mercury literally eats
away brain tissue. Faeroese health officials are now
the worlds experts on Minamata disease which is the
name given to mercury poisoning.
I myself was raised in a fishing village on Canadas
East coast. The staples of my childhood were lobster,
scallops, clams, cod, flounder, and smelts. We did not
eat mussels because they were considered dirty. Today
the restaurants in my hometown serve mussels because
they are the most common shellfish that remains. They
are even dirtier today than they were three decades
ago.
It is hard to have an appetite for clams when the mud
they are being dug from reeks of raw purplish oozing
sewage.
Ive given up seafood. I dont have the ability of
disassociation needed to separate the realities of
over-exploitation and toxicity from the food that I
eat.
And eating the flesh of mammals and birds instead
still does not alleviate the pressure on marine
wildlife. More than 50% of the biomass taken from the
sea is converted to fish meal to be fed to
domesticated land animals. We have literally converted
herbaceous mammals like cows, sheep, pigs and chicken
into the worlds foremost aquatic predators.
The main staple of the puffin in the North Sea, the
sand eel, has been so overly exploited by Danish
fisheries for animal feed that puffins have starved by
the thousands.
A great percentage of the fish caught off Chile goes
to feed the ever-expanding populations of farmed
salmon in British Columbia. It takes dozens of fish
snatched from the sea to raise just one farmed raised
Atlantic salmon.
The number of domestic housecats throughout the world
actually consume more tuna than all the worlds seals
combined.
This kind of biological upheaval in feeding patterns
is having serious environmental consequences.
And then to add insult to injury, humans point an
accusatory finger at seals, dolphins, sea-birds and
whales and whine that diminished fish populations have
been caused by these aquatic predators. At the same
time they suggest that humans are innocently just
trying to feed their families and enjoy a prawn
cocktail.
This disassociation has gone so far that recently a
branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals attempted to host a live crab boil where they
would have inflicted cruelty on some sea-animals to
raise funds to prevent cruelty to cute and cuddly land
animals.
We humans can justify anything and everything we do.
In the end, nature bats last, and the fish are having
their revenge as the natural reaction to our
ecologically criminal actions kicks into high gear.
Telling people that smoking causes cancer does not
deter some people from smoking and telling people that
eating fish can kill you will most likely not deter
some people from eating fish.
They prefer to continue playing toxic roulette.
Captain Paul Watson is the Founder and President
of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The ships operated by the Sea Shepherd Society serve
only vegan meals.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.Seashepherd.org
This article may be freely distributed and published
Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society (1977-
Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with
me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to
go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all."
- Walt
Whitman
www.Seashepherd.org
Tel: 360-370-5650
Fax: 360-370-5651
Address: P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA
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