The End of Spicy Tuna?

I was in Seattle last weekend with my mother for some girly bonding. We went to Etta’s for dinner where we ate AMAZING FOOD, including THE BEST SALAD I HAVE EVER EATEN, a spicy tuna sashimi salad, complete with fried green onion pancake (yeah, I know..not really salad).

But according to this article published today in the NYTimes, I might have mercury poisoning!!! Yay! A while ago, I did a calculation of how much tuna I could eat per week given FDA measures of mercury levels and suggested EPA exposure limits. I calculated that I could probably safely eat between 1.5 to 4 tuna rolls per week. But this was based on mercury measurements for YELLOWfin tuna, around .325 parts per million (ppm). In the NYTimes piece, they found that all pieces of tuna sushi were above the FDA “action” level of 1 ppm. Bad. Most restaurants said they were BLUEfin tuna, which makes sense because bluefin is a larger, longer-lived species, which means more time for mercury to accumulate in their flesh. TASTY.

I don’t know whether my tuna was yellow or bluefin, but I kind of don’t care either way. I guess what I am saying here is that...I fear not the mercury. Talk to me in 20 years when my neurons have dissolved into toxic sludge, but hey. Life’s too short man, I and I love my freakin’ spicy tuna.

But alas, when it comes to tuna, it’s not only my brains and heart I must worry about. Environmental Defense lists both blue and yellowfin among their Eco-Worst fishes. Maybe that was my last tuna dish for a while..