Excerpt
MILES O’BRIEN (Newshour): As brisk winter mornings go, this was a fine one to go fishing. We steamed out of the port of Kashima, Japan, on the good ship Inari Maru. Our captain was Kimio Sato, a fourth-generation fisherman. His son, Kosi, was at the helm.
Their predecessors in the family business never went on an expedition like this one.
“We cannot eat the fish we catch,” he told me. “All fish must be released. We are allowed to fish only the amount necessary for inspection.”
The Inari Maru was plying troubled waters, fishing for data. It’s part of a long-term effort to figure out when, if ever, fish caught near the Fukushima Daiichi power plant will be safe to eat.
Really reeled in nets filled with flounder, but threw most of them back into the Pacific. In the end, their haul was just one small bucket, about 12 pounds of fish, headed to a lab to be tested for radionuclide.
In Japan, the radiation safety standard for fish is 100 Becquerels per kilogram, the most stringent in the world.
“We occasionally catch fish exceeding that safety standard,” says Kimio. “I don’t think there are many, though, but because we’re in the 20-kilometer zone, I think we should be cautious.”
KEN BUESSELER, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: The Fukushima reactor in the background.
MILES O’BRIEN: Scientists who have studied these waters wouldn’t disagree. Ken Buesseler is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. He was part of the team 12 weeks after the meltdowns on a research expedition financed by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, also a NewsHour funder.
Buesseler cut his scientific teeth studying the impact of the Chernobyl meltdown on the Black Sea.
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