Toxic Roulette and the Revenge of the Fish

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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 we’re born, we’re 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 PCB’s 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 Canada’s 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 Island’s

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 world’s experts on Minamata disease which is the

name given to mercury poisoning.

 

I myself was raised in a fishing village on Canada’s

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.

 

I’ve given up “seafood”. I don’t 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 world’s 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 world’s 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.

 

Paulwatson 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) of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006) - 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