"From Fishing to Farmers Markets" ....news & events, issues & ideas

Saturday, January 21, 2006

 
FDA Likes Tuna Again

The FDA issued a small press release that indicates a more favorable stance toward tuna. As an agency which guards our American health and food safety, this is very good news for a governmental watchdog to endorse the major product of American albacore trollers. Our Papa George Gourmet Albacore contains less mercury than light tuna which is the less tasty seine caught skipjack tuna.
One year we were transiting the equator area of the Pacific on our way from Samoa to Hono.
(Hono is our fleet's name for, you guessed it, Honolulu) The sea was placid and the temperture blasting over the 95 degree mark. Mark, our crew member, had just been swimming and was chased by a shark. We hauled him in quickly and proceeded North for another hour or so. On the horizon the sea surface was disturbed by splashes and fins slicing through the ocean. This was not a small school of fish, it was acres and acres of fish! Out went the jigs and surprisingly a few bit. Come to find out, they were 7-12 pound skipjack tuna, exactly what the seiners out of Samoa target. They don't bite jigs well, so we only kept at it for an hour. We bled a dozen and stored them in our freezer for trading stock in Hono.
Just a little digression from our real news about the FDA's quiet little press release, and the news that small squid are showing up around Catalina Island. That can bode the season's end. No one in Pedro can remember the squid season lasting this long around Catalina.

- posted by Holly @ 8:01 AM