Alberta high-school student Bronwyn Delacruz loves sushi, but became concerned last summer after learning how little food inspection actually takes place on some of its key ingredients. The Grade 10 student from Grande Prairie said she was shocked to discover that, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) stopped testing imported foods for radiation in 2012. So, she decided to carry out her own tests. Armed with a $600 Geiger counter bought by her dad, Delacruz studied a variety of seafoods – particularly seaweeds – as part of an award-winning science project that she will take to a national fair next month. “Some of the kelp that I found was higher than what the International Atomic Energy Agency sets as radioactive contamination, which is 1,450 counts over a 10-minute period,” she said. “Some of my samples came up as 1,700 or 1,800.” Delacruz said the samples that “lit up” the most were products from China that she bought in local grocery stores.

Her results caught the attention of judges at the Peace River Regional Science Fair, who moved her project along to the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Windsor, Ont., in May. Delacruz also hopes to catch the attention of lawmakers in Ottawa with a petition urging the federal government to do more radiation testing on food. The CFIA states online that it “continues to monitor events in Japan” but has no immediate plans to resume regular radiation testing, noting “Japanese controls on the sale of contaminated product remain intact.”yo sushi franchise ireland The agency did extensive testing on a variety of foods for a year and a half after the nuclear disaster in Japan but found no cause for concern at that time.sushi club delivery mediodia “More than 200 food samples were tested and all were found to be below Health Canada's actionable levels for radioactivity,” the CFIA states in a February 2014 posting on its website. jiro dreams of sushi amazon ca

“As such, enhanced import controls have been lifted and no additional testing is planned.”In 2013, Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain, paid $1.76 million for the first bluefin at Tsukiji, which weighed 489 pounds. Kimura had paid $736,000—a world-record price at the time—for the first tuna of 2012. umi sushi menu jacksonville oregonThat fish weighed 593 pounds. sushi rolling mat morrisonsIt's no surprise, then, that journalists were steeling themselves for what was sure to come on January 4, 2014: If the past decade's trend in pricing continued, this year's first tuna would surely fetch more than a million dollars. mac sushi kiss nordstromBut the Tsukiji fish market bucked tradition this weekend and sold its first tuna to Kimura, yet again, for a mere $70,000. sushi tei delivery tangerang

That's still way more money than most bluefin go for in Japan. But compared to what everyone was expecting—an extravagant sum to start off the new year and remind us that these are the most prized fish in the sea—that's one crazy cheap tuna. Although the significance of the almost-$2 million tuna in 2013 was recognized worldwide, not everyone agreed on what that said about the actual value of global tuna stocks. It was tempting to see the price surge as a function of the fish's rarity, but then why weren't restaurants raising the prices of the bluefin dishes on their menus?Andrew David Thaler, who writes about the ocean on his blog Southern Fried Science, had this to say about the many factors at play in the Tsukiji auction last January: I’m certain that we’ll see this number presented as an argument against bluefin tuna fishing, as an example of an industry out-of-control, and as a symbol of how ruthlessly we'll hunt the last few members of a species to put on our dinner plates.

These issues are reflected in the tuna market, but I want to urge caution in drawing too many conclusions from this record breaking number. There are several issues in play at the first tuna auction of the year, and only some of them relate to the tuna fishery. Among the patrons of the Tsukiji fish auction, it is considered an honor to buy the first bluefin of the new years, and bidding wars reflect this fight for status. The massive international headlines that follow the purchase of such a fish is free advertising for the winner. As many auction-goers know, landing a high, early win is a way of marking your territory and letting your competitors know that you have the bankroll to push them out of a bidding war. If $1.8 million is actually what this fish is worth to the consumer, it would sell for a hefty $345 at the dinner table, minimum. The owner, Kiyoshi Kimura, reports that the tuna will be sold at a huge loss–about $4.60 per serving. All three species of bluefin tuna are currently overfished, and over the last few years attempts to protect bluefin tuna have been thwarted by fishing interests in Japan, New Zealand, the United States, and Mediterranean countries, among others.

While this record breaking sale should serve a clarion call for increased scrutiny of the global tuna trade, it does not accurately reflect the market value of the fish. What should we make of the dramatic nosedive in bluefin bidding at this year's auction? To answer that, we need to understand how this species rose to such prestige in the first place.  In the 1960s, no one wanted bluefin. In the United States, the fish sold for pennies per pound, and it was usually ground up for cat food. Japan fished for it, but few people there liked the bluefin's bloody, fatty meat. Then sushi bars started cropping up in America, and Americans developed a taste for toro—the prime meat of the bluefin's belly. By the 1970s, the Japanese had also developed a taste for bluefin. All of a sudden, bluefin was one of the most sought-after fish not only by Japanese fishermen but also by American and Canadian ones. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, between 1970 and 1990 fishing for bluefin in the Western Atlantic increased by more than 2,000 percent.