As waters are re-opened to fishing, shrimping and crabbing, concerns continue to grow in regard to the safety of seafood coming out of the Gulf.
I am in no way confident that “sensory testing” is going to keep people safe, particularly those who are most vulnerable to toxins like children and pregnant women. Smelling the fish, crab or shrimp may indicate lack of recent exposure, but it will not indicate past exposure from which the fish survived nor will it detect contaminated food the fish may have eaten. In fact, it will tell you nothing about what’s in the fish.
This in from our team of researchers in Pensacola…where a large bottom-hugging plume of oil has been reported. A total of 4 traps were set on Monday, August 9, 2010 at 8:45 a.m. in Pensacola (click on map to increase size). The traps were collected at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday August 10, 2010. A total of 36 crabs were collected from a depth of 20 feet. MORTALITY IN THE TRAPS WAS 100 PERCENT.
All crabs were intact, meaning there was no evidence that predators had killed them. A deep-water sample was taken alongside the traps, and the sediment brought up by the bailer (as pictured below) contained oil. Samples have been sent to a highly reputable lab – ALS Environmental in Alberta, Canada – and the results will help our team define toxicity issues in the water that may be causing these in-trap crab deaths. In addition to the crabs, our team also collected oyster and shrimp samples from this same location.
Stay tuned…we will post test results as soon as we get them from the lab.
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