I had to do a double take, I saw “Mercury” and “fish” in the same sentence and it was good news.

Today’s Sacramento Bee has an article reporting the findings from “the largest study ever conducted of mercury contamination in fish from the Bay Delta watershed.”

Biologists sampled more than 2000 fish from 22 species at 69 different fishing spots to gauge the effect of mercury used during the Gold Rush.  During that period nearly 75 million pounds of mercury was released into waterways by miners recovering gold from crushed gold ore. Much of the mercury is still present and continues to wash into the  Sacramento Delta with winter runoff.

“The surprising news, according to he study, is that fish in the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are not carting around as much mercury as researchers expected. This has allowed state health officials to loosen the consumption guidelines for certain fish species caught in the estuary.”

The California Office of Health Hazard Assessment has a long standing advisory urging  children and pregnant women not to eat more than one serving per month of Delta fish. Results of the study will relax the restriction to, “four servings per week of bluegill, catfish, clams, or crayfish, and up to two servings per week of Crappie , Carp, Sucker, or Largemouth, Smallmouth, or Spotted bass.”

</*end serious part*/>

Naturally I take this to mean a total vindication for Brownlining.

The trouble is I’ll have to backpedal and rename the “Little Stinking” to something much more grandiose. With scientific validation, I can catch carp and crap fish by the ton, and if any “high brow” type takes offense, I can claim, “Yea, well…I can eat as many servings per week as trout.”

It’s akin to the kid that runs home crying to his Poppa because the kid up the streets dad bought a new car. Pop remarks, “tell Johnny, ours is paid for…”

My reverie is interrupted brutally as I glance at the rest of the article, “…largemouth bass and Sacramento Pikeminnow, for some reason, are more likely to carry these high doses than other species.”

I’m guessing the fellow that wrote the article is a SingleBarbed reader, he played me like a fiddle…

Don’t mind me, I’ll just lay here and writhe in pain for a bit.

Technorati Tags: Mercury, Sacramento River Delta, mercury levels in fish, pikeminnow, hazard assessment