Mercury and Me

On the trip so far, we’ve caught dogtooth tuna, aku, mahi mahi, ono, and yellowfin.  Our main source of protein is fish.  Some days we could eat fish for lunch and dinner four or five days in a row (or like with that yellowfin for a week or two weeks). Awesome, right?

However, I know that certain fish have high mercury levels.  As TC and I are thinking that we might try to get pregnant in the upcoming year, I decided to do some research – what fish have higher levels of mercury?  How much fish is too much fish?  Turns out each type of fish that we’ve caught have moderate to high levels of mercury.  This would not necessarily be a problem for me except it can take anywhere from 44 to 80 days for an adult’s body to rid itself of half the mercury it is exposed to.   So “excessive maternal dietary intake of mercury in the months leading up to (as well as during) pregnancy may damage the critical neurological development that goes on in the womb . . . .”  Guess who’s not eating much fish for the rest of the trip?  This girl. 

How sad is that?  Tons of fresh fish and relegated to only a bite.  Actually, it all depends on what type of fish it is.  After all, it’s highly recommended that a woman eat at least 12 oz of fish a week since fish contain certain types of omega-3 oils that are hard to get from other sources.  TC and I started to wonder if perhaps fish that he can get via spear-fishing would be okay.  So, I did more research and found the following fish are considered safe and are recommended as part of the 12 oz of fish eaten per week by a woman who may have a baby in the relatively near future:

Anchovies

Butterfish

Calamari (squid)

Caviar (farmed)

Crab (king)

Pollock

Catfish

Whitefish

Perch (ocean)

Scallops

Flounder

Haddock

Hake

Herring

Lobster (spiny/rock)

Shad

Sole

Crawfish/crayfish

Salmon

Shrimp

Clams

Tilapia

Oysters

Sardines

Sturgeon (farmed)

Trout (freshwater)

Grouper, a fish that TC could easily spearfish, is in the high to moderate level of mercury category.  Hmm . . . looking at the above list, there are not many fish that we can easily find while sailing.  TC said that we could easily stock up on anchovies or sardines, but I just can’t do it.  We might find some lobster and TC could possibly get a flounder, but they’re not that common.

Long story short - I'll be eating fish, just not at every meal.

This is a link to probably the easiest to read info about fish (especially ones that we can catch out here) – it’s out of Hawaii: http://hawaii.gov/health/family-child-health/wic/pdf/fishsafety.pdf

Other fairly simple guidelines from the FDA: http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm110591.htm

This link has more info with actual amounts of mercury in each type of fish (on average, it could always have more or less mercury depending on what came before it in the food chain):  https://www.caremark.com/wps/portal/HEALTH_RESOURCES?topic=pregmercury

Have you seen what high levels of mercury in the mother can do to children?  I remembered going go a museum exhibit in Japan regarding the Minamata mercury poisoning.   A very sad story: http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/minamata.htm