NEW YORK — September 7, 2012 — An Australian fisherman caught a 600-pound monster tuna near Greymouth, New Zealand, but scientists fear fish caught there may be contaminated with radiation from the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown.
Scientists think there might be something fishy about the quarter-ton tuna an Australian man caught off the coast of New Zealand.
It took two hours and 128 pounds of tackle for Paul Worsteling to get the 600-pound monster out of the water near Greymouth, New Zealand. The area is known for its blue grenadier fish — one of the main ingredients in the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish — with nearly 200 tons harvested there each year, according to Australia’s News Limited.
But scientists are worried about this region of the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand: they fear the migratory fish there may be contaminated with radiation from the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan.
And so researchers from New Zealand Fisheries will test samples of Worsteling’s mammoth tuna for radiation in order to see if the impacts of the Fukushima disaster are spreading across the world’s oceans.
It’s not only Australian and New Zealand experts who are worried about fallout from Fukushima: a team of American scientists actually found this year that tuna from CHARLIEJapan carried radiation all the way across the Pacific to Southern California.
Read the full story at the New York Daily News.