Saturday, January 21, 2012

Bumper Crop of Big Oysters in Miyagi Prefecture, Oysters Grew Extremely Fast

From Asahi Shinbun Miyagi local version (1/20/2012):

気仙沼市唐桑町東舞根で19日、震災後の昨年6月に仕込んだ養殖カキ160キロが出荷された。今秋に出荷予定だったが生育が早く、前倒しした。出荷は今月いっぱい続くという。

On January 19, 160 kilograms of cultured oysters were shipped, as the first batch, from Higashi Mone District of Karakuwa-cho in Kesennuma City in Miyagi Prefecture. The oysters had been seeded in June last year. The shipment was scheduled for this fall, but the oysters grew so rapidly that fishermen decided to harvest and ship right away. The shipment will continue throughout the month.

 畠山哲さん(40)ら4人が共同で出荷した。海中に垂らしたロープについたカキを引き揚げ、付着物を落としたカキをかごに移し、ロープを再度海中に垂らす作業をした。かごが震災で不足しているため、一部のカキをむいて出荷した。

4 fishermen including Tetsu Hatayama (age 40) harvested and shipped the oysters. They pulled the ropes that were in the ocean to take the oysters attached to the ropes, cleaned the oysters and put them in the baskets, and put the ropes back in the ocean. Since they are missing the baskets because of the earthquake/tsunami, they removed some oysters from the shells to ship.

 畠山さんによると「津波の後はカキの生育が早い」との言い伝えがある。養殖イカダが震災で減り、密植が解消されたことなどが要因と見られている。畠山さんは「放っておくとイカダが沈むので、作業を前倒しした。出荷も震災による特殊事情です」と話した。

According to Hatayama, there's an old saying that oysters grow fast after a tsunami. They may have grown rapidly since a number of rafts used for oyster culture [ropes are dangled from the rafters] were lost in the earthquake/tsunami and the dense planting was alleviated [as the tsunami wiped out the rafts]. Hatayama says, "We decided to harvest sooner, otherwise the rafts would have sunk from the weight of the oysters. This is a special case, shipping this early, thanks to the earthquake/tsunami."

Oysters eat phytoplankton in the ocean.

NHK did the documentary in November last year investigating the marine contamination from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, and found high levels of bioconcentration in abalones of both radioactive cesium and radioactive silver (Ag-110m), the latter particularly in the liver. Oysters are almost all internal organs as they don't need and use muscles once they attach themselves to rocks or ropes.

There is absolutely no concern for radiation in the Asahi article.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

All these shells are basically nothing else than filters. Very prone to carry toxic bacterias, viruses, metals, etc...
Be quite cautious with them, and especially the river ones.
It is quite often that prefectures here in France forbid the sale of oysters from some location, although it does not make the breeders - nor the consumers like me, very happy.

Darth3/11 said...

Scratch Fukushima OYSTERS from my growing list of "suspiciously radioactive" food!!! Damnation.

Anonymous said...

Check this out,

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201201190032

Lets all eat Cesium , its safe !

Anonymous said...

from your asahi link,

"The latest figures are not so large that one should immediately review the choice of food ingredients. "

ok, next assertion ?

"The highest daily intake among the samples from Fukushima was 17.30 becquerels. "

The natural expectation at that point is for asahi to tell us what that intake was composed of, but fukface doesn't want to do that ?

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Mainichi did, and the numbers in Fukushima (2 locations) were over 100 becquerels, thanks to the rice that turned out to be containing a lot of radioactive cesium. Even that Mainichi study had a very high detection limit to make it worthwhile.

Anonymous said...

More work,

did either asahi or mainichi give the sampled residents' diets prior to their study?

Most likely not.

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