A piece of seafood news out of Japan has been attracting plenty of attention these, I’m talking about a giant bluefin tuna that was auctionedearlier this week for the astounding price of $177,000 or 16.3 million yen. And as you might expect, that number shot around the world in a matter of minutes once it hit the news wires, appearing in hundreds of news outlets including the Huffington Post.

Lets be clear Mediterranean bluefin tuna has an abysmal sustainability story, its been over fished and the measures in place to protect it have, quite frankly, failedweve signed on to call for a moratorium on bluefin fishing in the Mediterranean. But what really caught my eye about the story in the Huffington Post was some of the comments that followed, like this one:

“Yum. A concentrated mercury treat. They don’t test them for mercury content before they eat them. Tuna have the highest concentration of mercury of any fish. You’d think the Japanese might care, after the huge mercury poisoning of citizens in Minamata, Japan.”

I can’t say I’m shocked to find disinformation like this in a comment string but it does point out just how much of a stranglehold activist distortions have on some segments of the public. For starters tuna does not have the highest concentration of mercury of any fish, that’s just not true plain and simple. And the levels it does have don’t reach a level of concern. Furthermore, it’s hard not to be disgusted to see activists continue to leverage the suffering of the people at Minamata, who were the victims of a horrible industrial disaster, and get away with comparing it with the trace amounts of mercury contained in all types of seafood. The people of Minamata didn’t get sick from eating high priced sushi at fancy restaurants, they got sick because industrial waste from a greedy chemical corporation was dumped in their community.