Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
2/28/13 Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eat it up - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fukushima-radiation-20130225,0,1220090,full.story 1/5
Comments 39 Email Share TweetTweet 140 5
COLUMN ONE
Radiation from the nuclear disaster offers biologists an opportunity to study migrations offish, turtles and birds across the Pacific. The research could benefit conservation efforts.
By Ery n Brown, Los Angeles Times
February 25, 2013 , 6:51 p.m.
Membership Serv ices Jobs Cars Real Estate Subscribe Rentals Weekly Circulars Custom Publishing Place Ad
SCIENCE
LOCAL U.S. WORLD BUSINESS SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT HEALTH LIVING TRAVEL OPINION DEALS
TRENDING NOW SEQUESTRATION VAN CLIBURN SKID ROW SANTA CRUZ SHOOTING L.A. ELECTIONSSearch
Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eatit up
780
Yes No
Will we fully understand tuna migration within our lifetimes?
Yourtake?
See more »
Marine biologist Dan Madigan stood on a dock in San Diego
and considered some freshly caught Pacific bluefin tuna. The
fish had managed to swim 5,000 miles from their spawning
grounds near Japan to California's shores, only to end up the
catch of local fishermen.
It was August 2011, five months since a magnitude 9
earthquake and tsunami had struck in Japan, crippling the
Recommended on Facebook
Most Viewed Latest News
Connect
Like 426k
Saved from Dumpster: Amazing map
collection makes librarians tingle
Charles Davis and 157 others recommended
this.
France says it won't negotiate to freed
kidnapped family
2,378 people recommended this.
Stones exhibit opens inMay at Rock Hall
Opinion: In medicine,one dose doesn't fit all
Pro-Obama group wadesinto budget standoff
Arrest of union bossrivets Mexico
BREAKING PHOTOS VIDEO CRIME OBITUARIES WEATHER TRAFFIC CROSSWORDS SUDOKU HOROSCOPES APPS
Radioactiv e cesium lev els stillelev ated in Fukushima, Japan, fish
Photos of the Day More »
Sta n for d Un iv er sity g r a du a te stu den t Da n Ma dig a n in Mon ter ey . Tu n a stea ks h e bou g h t in Sa n Dieg o
tested post iv e for cesiu m -1 3 4 a n d cesiu m -3 7 , w a ste pr odu cts fr om Fu ku sh im a . (Er y n Br ow n , Los
A n g eles Tim es / Febr u a r y 2 5 , 2 01 3 )
Like 640
Sign In or Sign Up Like 426k
2/28/13 Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eat it up - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fukushima-radiation-20130225,0,1220090,full.story 2/5
Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Madigan couldn't stop
thinking about pictures he'd seen on TV of Japanese
emergency crews dumping radioactive water from the failing
reactors into the Pacific Ocean.
The graduate student looked at the tuna and wondered:
Could they have transported any of that radiation to
California?
FOR THE RECORD:
Radioactive fish: An article and photo caption in the Feb. 26
Section A about marine animals contaminated by radiation
referred to cesium-37 as a known waste product from Japan's
Fukushima nuclear disaster. The references should have said
cesium-137. —
For most people, the thought of radioactive sushi tuna is
nightmarish, but for Madigan it represented an opportunity.
If radiation from Fukushima was detectable, scientists might
look for traces of the contamination in all sorts of amazing
creatures that make epic journeys across the open seas, from
tuna to sharks to turtles to birds. They might learn more
about where the animals came from, when they made their
journeys, and why.
They might learn how a single, man-made event — the plant failure in Fukushima — could be linked
to the lives and fates of animals making homes over half the globe.
Madigan bagged some tuna steaks he had collected from the fishermen, threw them in a cooler and
made a mental note to call Nicholas Fisher, a scientist he knew who would be able to tell him whether
the tuna had carried radiation from the disaster.
Maybe the fish could still tell their story.
***
Madigan began thinking about the globe-spanning migrations of marine animals in 2006, during a
fishing trip in the open waters off Costa Rica.
Radioactive fish: An article and photo caption in the Feb. 26 Section A about marine animals
contaminated by radiation referred to cesium-37 as a known waste product from Japan’s Fukushima
nuclear disaster. The references should have said cesium-137.
For hours, he and his friends saw nothing — no land, no features in the water, no fish. Then, in a
flash, they hooked and released a dozen sailfish, magnificent 150-pound catches known for their
spectacular jumping maneuvers and brilliant colors.
"It's black water, and all of a sudden you have a huge animal," said Madigan, a Long Island, N.Y.,
native who camps on the weekends and catches all of the fish he eats. "Why? Why now? And why
here?"
Intrigued, Madigan enrolled in a doctoral program at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station
in Pacific Grove, Calif., where scientists used electronic tags to track the journeys of sea creatures
such as white sharks, leatherback turtles and the black-footed albatross.
They had also tagged the Pacific bluefin tuna, a creature distinguished by its unusual biology (it's one
of the few warm-bodied fish) and its popularity on sushi menus. At a January auction in Tokyo, a
buyer paid a record $1.8 million for just one of the fish, which are carved up into toro and other
choice bites.
Pacific bluefin tuna migration is mysterious. Only some of the tuna born each year leave the Western
Pacific around Japan for California, swimming for two months or more to reach their destination.
They stay here for a few years, and then they swim back to the waters where they were born so that
they can reproduce. Some tuna are thought to cross the ocean multiple times.
Researchers don't really understand why. It may have to do with food availability, ocean
temperatures or other factors.
Madigan's doctoral research tries to fill in some of the blanks by looking for nitrogen and carbon
isotopes in tissue that serve as signatures of where the fish have lived and for how long. But
Video
Take a Leap in May with motion c…CNET Feb 27, 2013
Harry Styles Goes
Down on Stage
Older Brother Voices
Suspicions A…
Take a Leap in May
with motion c…
Alhambra Police
Crack Down On …
Dogs abandoned at Fukushima,Japan, suffer PTSD-like effects
Fukushima seafood on sale for firsttime since nuclear disaster
Mediterranean diet, with oliv e oiland nuts, beats low-fat diet
Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busystudent years 02/28/2013, 1:53 a.m.
Cannes 2013: Steven Spielberg to head filmfestival jury 02/28/2013, 1:24 a.m.
Divergent views on illegal immigration emerge instate GOP 02/28/2013, 1:06 a.m.
UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad has minor anklesprain 02/28/2013, 12:54 a.m.
Chiefs to acquire 49ers quarterback Alex Smith02/28/2013, 12:20 a.m.
2/28/13 Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eat it up - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fukushima-radiation-20130225,0,1220090,full.story 3/5
interpreting the chemical signatures can be tricky. If Madigan could use the radioactive signal from
Fukushima to confirm the results of the chemical analysis, he realized, it might bolster his work.
Or that was the theory, anyway.
Madigan, a 30-year-old whose casual demeanor can mask the intensity he brings to his research,
called Fisher about the San Diego steaks.
The marine radioactivity expert, who works as a professor at Stony Brook University in New York,
doubted they'd detect any radiation in the bluefins. Surely, he thought, any radiation the fish might
have picked up would have dissipated over the months it took for them to cross the Pacific. What's
more, it was hardly certain that the animals ever got close enough to Fukushima to encounter its
plume in the first place.
"I thought, OK, I can do this, but I wasn't expecting anything," Fisher said.
Still, he forged ahead, analyzing quarter-cup-sized piles of freeze-dried, powdered muscle from some
of the younger tuna Madigan had seen that day on the dock.
After examining a sample from the first fish, Fisher called Madigan.
"He was like, 'You're not going to believe it, but here it is,'" Madigan said.
The tuna had tested positive for cesium-134 and cesium-37, both known waste products from
Fukushima. For Madigan, it was "a real discovery moment, like in the movies," he said.
A second fish also tested positive for the isotopes. So did a third. And a fourth.
In the end, every single one of the 15 fish they examined carried radiation from the power plant.
In May, Fisher and Stony Brook postdoctoral researcher Zofia Baumann published a paper in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences detailing their findings. The team
believed it was the first time that anyone had demonstrated that migratory animals could transport
radioactive contaminants across the Pacific.
The amounts the fish carried were minuscule — far less, ounce for ounce, than the amount of
naturally occurring radiation in a banana — but possibly enough for scientists to gain insight into
animal migration, the team wrote in their report.
Madigan collected additional tuna samples in 2012, testing 50 to see whether the cesium signal was
still detectable more than a year after the accident. In a study published online this month by the
journal Environmental Science & Technology, he and his colleagues reported that it was.
They concluded that their tracking method worked, and that Fukushima provided "an
unprecedented opportunity" for scientists to use radioactive tracers to follow animal movement.
"This was just nature being amazing," Fisher said. "Now, potentially, we have a very useful tool for
understanding these animals."
***
They're digging in to see what secrets the Fukushima cesium might reveal about other animals.
In coming months, the three researchers and colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and other institutions plan to analyze hundreds more bluefin tuna, as well as albacore
tuna; mahi mahi; ocean sunfish; opa; mako, blue and salmon sharks; loggerhead turtles; and sooty
shearwaters, a type of migratory seabird.
They'll examine samples collected in New Zealand, Hawaii and Alaska as well as in California. They
might look through archived specimens for salmon and whales to test. Other research groups may
track the contamination to study marine animals too, Madigan said.
If scientists find Fukushima radiation in swordfish, for example, it will be the first evidence that the
species migrates across the entire Pacific. The same would be true of opa, sunfish and mako sharks.
In salmon sharks, it's known that males tend to congregate in the western Pacific and females in the
east, with both sexes meeting up in Alaska to breed. But biologists don't know whether the
segregation is complete. If female salmon sharks test positive for cesium, that might suggest that
they occasionally do travel west to Japan, and that Alaska may not be the only place the species goes
to reproduce. That could have ramifications for conservation efforts.
Hoyt Peckham, another Stanford-affiliated marine biologist, who is based in Mexico, is sending to
Fisher's lab some samples from endangered loggerhead turtles that have died and washed up on the
shores of Baja California Sur. Using the tracer to get a better idea of the timing of loggerhead
migrations should help with his conservation work too.
2/28/13 Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eat it up - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fukushima-radiation-20130225,0,1220090,full.story 4/5
Comments 39 Email Share TweetTweet 140 5
Photos: Celebrity portraitsby The Times
Jonathan Gold quiz:Pudding on the Ritz
Photos: Notable deaths of2013
Photos: The 10 trigger-happiest states in America
Photos: Pope Benedict XVIholds final general audiencebefore retirement
And then there's the Pacific bluefin, which isn't endangered but is drastically overfished, with
numbers down 96% from unfished levels, according to figures released in December. Knowing how
long they spend in different locations could help restore tuna numbers by helping officials control
fishing in waters where the fish fatten up before they spawn, Madigan said.
He imagines pulling together a map of the Pacific crisscrossed by the paths of radiation-toting
animals — "an amazing image of transport … all from a little dot" in Japan, he said.
The scientists may have to work quickly to capitalize on their opportunity: Radioactive materials
decay, and Fukushima's trail will fade.
Like the elusive migrating creatures of the deep, the contaminants will eventually vanish into the
vast, seemingly featureless Pacific.
Copy r ig h t © 2 01 3 , Los A n g eles Tim es
780
Comments (39) Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Paul Martin journalist at 2:46 AM February 28, 2013
SCientists may know a lot about some things but they often lack COMMON SENSE !
G. W. Bush, the Decider at 11:31 PM February 27, 2013
Don't listen to corporate scientists. 90% of science is corporatized, hence not scientific, nothelpful for the person, only for the corporation.
James Greenidge at 8:35 PM February 27, 2013
Deadly brew? Cannot be tolerated by life? No amount of radiation is safe? Mysteryradioactive sick kids? You folks need to get a grip and cough up the -professionallyrespected- soucres where you get your off-the-wall "facts". The radiophobia here is totallyunreal. Don't log on slinging lies as fact like that. Major biomed institutions and the U.N. andcancer institutes the world over totally debunk the radiactive hysteria at nuclear sites,whether mining or accident. For those too weary to research the real world you can checkout med compilations at atomicinsights.com. I leave others to continue to shake and shimmyin the Twilight Zone.
Like 640
2/28/13 Radioactive tuna from Fukushima? Scientists eat it up - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fukushima-radiation-20130225,0,1220090,full.story 5/5
Corrections The Envelope Media Kit About Us Contact Us Site Map
Bu r ba n k Lea der Coa st lin e Pilot Da ily Pilot Hu n tin g ton Bea ch In depen den t New s Pr ess Pa sa den a Su n V a lley Su n KTLA Hoy
Ba lt im or e Su n Ch ica g o Tr ibu n e Da ily Pr ess Ha r tfor d Cou r a n t Los A n g eles Tim es Or la n do Sen tin el Su n Sen tin el Th e Mor n in g Ca ll
Ter m s of Ser v ice Pr iv a cy Policy A bou t Ou r A ds Los A n g eles Tim es, 2 02 West 1 st Str eet , Los A n g eles, Ca lifor n ia , 9 001 2 Copy r ig h t 2 01 3
A Tribune Newspaper website
