Shifting Baselines

Stop the presses. This sushi debate is getting out of control. I have had to revisit the YouTube of sea otters holding hands to remind myself that almost 10 million humans still have a soul--that it's not all about us and our mercury levels.

You probably know what happened. Marian Burros wrote an article about mercury in sushi tuna that got on the front page of the January 23rd New York Times. Blogs (including this one) peddled it. Later NYTimes articles espoused its findings, though said sushi-lovers would ignore them. The fishing industry cried factual errors (they wrote a letter to The New York Times citing five) and indeed, this correction is now appended to the original article:

A chart with the continuation of a front-page article on Wednesday about high mercury levels found in tuna sushi in New York stores and restaurants referred imprecisely to what the Environmental Protection Agency deems to be an acceptable level of mercury consumption over a period of several months by an adult of average weight. The agency uses the phrase "reference dose" to refer to the daily level of mercury consumption it considers acceptable for a long-term diet; it does not use the phrase "weekly reference dose." (To find the acceptable weekly level of consumption over the long term, the reference dose is multiplied by seven.)

Politcal scientists used the sushi to write wacky columns. A writer at Slate called the article a "scaremonger" but still rode in on its coattails. And today Marian Burros wrote another piece on how many restaurants across the nation have begun their own mercury testing. She ends the article with what seems to be a bone thrown to the sushi hungry dogs of America:

"If you eat the appropriate portion you should not consider it a problem."

But hold up. There is a problem. In all this conversation, there has been almost no mention of the current dismal status of tuna stocks, which is as good a reason to go light on tuna as any mercury content.

We know the tuna are in real trouble--worldwide, the bluefin population has plunged more than 90 percent in the last 30 years. Just before the November conference on setting tuna quotas happened last year, The New York Times ran an opinion piece about how:

Blame for the crisis is global. The European Commission has promoted ruinously excessive fishing quotas. The United States is a major source of sushi demand, and must do much more to protect the bluefin in one of its important spawning grounds, the Gulf of Mexico. And a huge slab of raw guilt should be placed on Japan, the world's most voracious fish consumer, whose appetite for the bluefin has done the most to make it disappear.

But the Turkey meeting actually increased the quota for bluefin tuna by 1,000 tonnes (for a total quota of nearly 30,000 t). Carl Safina agrees: this decision was: stupid, stupid.

And this just in: Seafood industry consultants predict that U.S. per capita seafood consumption will hit a record 16.8 pounds per person when 2007 numbers are officially released later this year. Doesn't seem like anyone is doing too much sacrificing--for mercury content or otherwise. But if I was a tuna, I would try to eat as much mercury as I could. Seems like that might be the only way to keep some tuna in the sea.