If you care about your health and care about the planet then you should stop eating fish and seafood right now. There are very real health and ethical reasons to do so.
Why? Well, because the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a huge disaster that will have a long-term effect on the environment.
I won’t pretend to know much about he technical details of the leak itself, but even if the well is successfully closed soon there is still the issue of the existing level of pollution and its impact on sea-living species.
Do not ignore the issues because the US government has disallowed fishing in the water that is being directly affected by the oil spill. We are not ‘off the hook’ so to speak. What happens under the surface of the water is not obvious to the eye of a casual observer.
We have two serious issues to look at when we decide whether we are comfortable eating seafood: firstly what types of toxins could find their way into fish and shellfish, and secondly what would be the effects of overfishing in the non-oil-affected parts of the world to make up for the shortfall in the supply of fish?
In terms of toxins, we have a number of different substances building up in fish that are living in oil affected waters. Firstly we have crude oil and secondly we have the dispersant being used, currently Corexit 9500. Crude oil contains both mercury and lead, which are obviously highly poisonous heavy metals. Crude oil also includes benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), all of which cause cancer. While scientists claim that PAH does not accumulate in fish, they concede that it does accumulate in shellfish. The dispersant Corexit 9500 is a highly poisonous substance, roughly four times more poisonous than oil.
Heavy metals (such as mercury and lead) dispersed in water accumulates in the bodies of fish as the water is filtered through the fish’s respiratory system. Additionally predatory fish tend to eat other fish, resulting in a greater heavy metal load. By the time a larger fish, prized by humans as a tasty morsel, is caught and sold as human food the heavy metals have been recycled and accumulated many times over.
Mercury is associated with brain impairments, both degenerative in adults and the development of autism and chromosomal disorders (such as Down’s syndrome) in children. Mercury crosses the placenta in pregnant mothers and has its greatest effect on babies and children due to being significantly more concentrated.
Lead affects the nervous system, brain, kidneys and reproductive system. In children it has been associated with low IQ, slow growth and hearing defects. In laboratory tests on animals, no minimum quantity of lead has been considered a safe dose; even the smallest quantities have had a harmful effect.
Corexit 9500, the chemical dispersant used by BP to try to break up the oil from the surface of the water is known to be both more toxic and also less effective than other chemical disbursants, requiring a heavier application. Corexit 9500 was reputedly banned in Britain over a decade ago due to its highly toxic affects on both the environment and people; in this case we have Corexit 9500 being used over a large volume of water.
The use of Corexit 9500 in such quantities and at such oceanic depths is unknown in human history, and the exact contents of the mixture are a trade secret. Corexit 9500 increases in toxicity as it heats up, and oil in the water tends to increase the temperature of the water. It is expected that it will affect humans’ respiratory systems, nervous systems, livers, kidneys and also cause blood disorders. Just as with mercury and lead, Corexit 9500 will have a greater impact on children due to their smaller size. At the time that this article was written (early June 2010) over 600,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 have been applied to the ocean’s surface.
Clearly the sea-creatures living in and around the Gulf of Mexico are going to be off the menu for some time. The government won’t willingly allow the people to eat contaminated fish right?
Well unfortunately the Gulf Coast is responsible for about half of the total US harvest in its high season. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico is an estimated $2.4 billion industry. Not only is fishing a good source of income for the government (via taxation) but people are currently eating those fish and so assuming the demand remains, the supply of fish for food will have to come from someplace else.
In addition, many fish, particularly deep ocean fish are migratory and will pass through the Gulf of Mexico waters on their way to someplace else. Some fish will travel up to 200 miles for feeding and reproduction and so it is not possible to easily determine which fish will have been affected by the growing pollution.
Health issues aside, there is a secondary issue which will begin to affect other fishing areas. That is overfishing. Overfishing is when commercial fishing operations catch so many fish that the remaining population of fish are not able to increase their numbers enough to replace the number that have been caught. As it is, overfishing has already been a global issue for some time and according to overfishing.org, almost 80% of the world’s fisheries are fully to over-exploited, depleted or in a state of collapse, and over 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish stocks are already gone. If we do not do something about it, we are approaching a situation where some fish may become endangered species. By increasing demand for fish from areas that normally have fewer fish numbers, we are simultaneously speeding up the rate at which the population of fish from that area declines.
Overfishing has a large effect on the ocean ecology as a whole. As fewer fish are caught in commercial fishing nets, ocean mammals and birds (such as dolphins, whales and pelicans) either have a hard time finding food, or are caught in nets themselves. Once caught in fishing nets, these animals and birds are usually killed and discarded.
So while those of us who are not yet affected by the disaster in the USA can sit back and watch everything unfold, it will be our fish stock that will be systematically removed from the oceans to make up for the shortfall in US fishing.
In my opinion, the only healthy and ethical thing to do about the seafood issue is to completely stop eating fish and their byproducts. We need to look into getting our EFAs from other sources such as flaxseeds, spirulina, chlorella and phytoplankton. Fortunately fish do not create their own EFAs, but instead break down the EFAs in the microalgae food that they consume. Humans are able to do the same, and so we can replace fish in the diet with supplemental sources of EFA. I have previously used fish oil for DHA supplementation, but I am going to try out some vegan alternatives.
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