PCBs | Southern Fried Science

Banning Arctic fishing and protecting public beach access: Thursday Afternoon Dredging, October 4th, 2018

Posted on October 4, 2018 by David Shiffman

Cuttings (short and sweet):

Follow fisheries biologist Justin Rizzari on twitter!
Commercial fishing banned across much of the Arctic. By Fiona Harvey, for the Guardian.
Slavery with your seafood. By the Save Our Seas Foundation blog.
The top fish books for kids. By Abigail Lynch, for the Fisheries Blog.

Spoils (long reads and deep dives):

Supreme Court refuses to take up Martins Beach case. Surfers, beachgoers relieved. By Peter Fimrite, for the San Francisco Chronicle. This case is important for the right of public access to beaches, and involved a wealthy Californian who tried to keep people off of “his” stretch of beach.
Indonesian Tsunami Was Powered by a Deadly Combo of Tectonics and Geography. By Andrea Thompson, for Scientific American. A fascinating (but scary) look at what made this tsunami so powerful and deadly.
Largely banned industrial chemicals could wipe out killer whales, study warns. By Shreya Dasgupta, for MongaBay. Harmful chemicals can continue to wreak environmental havoc even years after they’ve been banned.

Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!

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Why mercury and PCBs?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Amy Freitag

A while back I reviewed the many seafood guides and the various ways they rank seafood choices. They do share one thing in common, however, and that’s the special denotation of certain species as hazardous to human health because of toxin load. Specifically, high levels of mercury and PCBs as found by an Environmental Defense study.

First, kudos to EDF for making their data have immediate impact. Other studies of toxins in fish have sat around for literally decades before becoming part of the mainstream discourse about fisheries. But it does beg the question, what makes mercury and PCBs so important among the myriad toxins in our oceans and our seafood?