# Good Eats in SE Michigan - Fish



## ESOX (Nov 20, 2000)

stinger63 said:


> I will not eat resident fish from the saginaw or clinton river systems.I limit my consumption of fish of the st clair river.


LMAO. You won't eat fish from the Saginaw or Clinton at all, but have no problem eating some fish from the SCR, with those blobs of chemicals all over the bottom from Sarnias Chemical Valley?


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## MSUICEMAN (Jan 9, 2002)

keep in mind the testing procedures used to test for toxins in fish.... learn if the study took only the edible (fillet) parts of the fish and tested that, or took a whole fish, ground it up into a homogenous mixture, and tested that. A lot of the chemicals/heavy metals reside in fats and organs. If you trim your fillets and don't like fish liver or fish brains you would get a LOT less bad stuff than shown in the second kind of testing procedure.


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## USMarine1171 (Feb 16, 2007)

ESOX said:


> LMAO. You won't eat fish from the Saginaw or Clinton at all, but have no problem eating some fish from the SCR, with those blobs of chemicals all over the bottom from Sarnias Chemical Valley?


Speaking of chemicals in the St. Clair River, during the summer of 2004 I rented a speedboat out of Selfridge and some buddies and I went tubing down the South Channel. Two weeks later while reading the Detroit News I come across an article about a chemical spill which happened the day we were tubing. Apparently one of those industrial companies spilled thousands of gallons of a chemical vinyl chloride, the precursor to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into the river, while we were tubing!!! I would probably be in the "Do not eat" category.:smile-mad


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

ESOX said:


> LMAO. You won't eat fish from the Saginaw or Clinton at all, but have no problem eating some fish from the SCR, with those blobs of chemicals all over the bottom from Sarnias Chemical Valley?


You try and twist my words Esox I never said I had or had no problem eating fish from the scr.I said I limit my fish consumption of how many fish I do eat from that river.Anyone who knows me where I fish at has seen me give away more fish than I ever keep for that reason.They just think that I give them away because I have more fish than I know what do with :16suspect


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## USMarine1171 (Feb 16, 2007)

MSUICEMAN said:


> keep in mind the testing procedures used to test for toxins in fish.... learn if the study took only the edible (fillet) parts of the fish and tested that, or took a whole fish, ground it up into a homogenous mixture, and tested that. A lot of the chemicals/heavy metals reside in fats and organs. If you trim your fillets and don't like fish liver or fish brains you would get a LOT less bad stuff than shown in the second kind of testing procedure.


PCB's and dioxin derivatives will accumulate in fatty tissue, so trimming the fillet would reduce the amounts of these chemicals. However, mercury, which is predominantly in the form of methylmercury will accumulate to a greater extent in muscle tissue than in fat tissue. This information is irrelevant though when there are already low levels of the toxins present, so keep eating!


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## MSUICEMAN (Jan 9, 2002)

not to get into a debate, but methylmercury, along with tetra-ethyl lead are lipid soluble and bioaccumulate in organs and other fatty tissues more than (but do still) muscle.

i will note that this is just my understanding and can be wrong, but i was told this by someone in the past and just kinda stuck. i am not a doctor or even a human biologist for that matter.


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

Its a proven fact that mercury doesnt just accumlate in the fatty tissues of the fish and its widely distrubeted in the fishes flesh.Something to think about when eating fish from rivers that are known to be high in mercury content.FTR all those walleyes we catch in major river systems like the sag,titabiwassi,flint,st clair are full of high amounts of mercury.The younger and smaller the fish less mercury but if eaten in high amounts the mercury can still accumulate in toxic amounts.


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## fasthunter (Sep 15, 2006)

Oooh.....Ooooh I know where the Methylmercury come from. I read it in a science magazine or something of that sort. Oddly it's not dumped in. The vast majority is from the soot in the coal plants. Then a bacteria breaks it down by digesting it. The later result is methymercury. (I'm not a scientist, and I'm not sure if it was the bacteria or an algae that did it either.) I did remember reading it though. It was a highly interesting read. I also found out that the methylmercury is actually more toxic than mercury by itself. Doe's it keep me from eating the fish from most lakes though. Nope. I even on occasion eat the channel cats out of Belleville Lake:yikes: :yikes: .........Seriously too. Just not all of the time. ...........Now the Rouge.......NO WAY!!!!! I remember hearing about how a bunch of people were breaking out in rashes and getting sick just from swimming in Newburgh lake years ago. If you couldn't even swim in it a few years ago.(I must admit they cleaned it up alot though.) I won't be eating fish out of there.


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## USMarine1171 (Feb 16, 2007)

MSUICEMAN said:


> not to get into a debate, but methylmercury, along with tetra-ethyl lead are lipid soluble and bioaccumulate in organs and other fatty tissues more than (but do still) muscle.
> 
> i will note that this is just my understanding and can be wrong, but i was told this by someone in the past and just kinda stuck. i am not a doctor or even a human biologist for that matter.


I hear ya, I'm not trying to debate it either, I'm certainly no expert. I have some background in medicinal chemistry, but I'm just a student. Just looking at the structure you would assume because of the methyl group it would deposit in fatty tissues. But the mercury has a positive charge, making it polar and preventing it from crossing the highly non-polar cell membrane of the fat cells(adipose cells). Once absorbed from the stomach the memthylmercury would circulate in the blood until it binds to other negatively charged ions, like chloride. But it would readily dissociate in the blood as this is an aqueous solution. The interesting part about methylmercury is that the positive charge forms a covalent bond to thiol groups(sulfur-hydrogen) which are present on the amino acid cysteine. Therefore, methylmercury would accumulate in muscle more than fat. I read a study about methylmercury accumulation in birds and it accumulates in this order: feathers, brain, muscle, fat. So like you said it still accumulates in other tissues more than muscle, but it accumulates in muscle more than fat, so trimming the fat wouldn't do much. 

Still though, I wouldn't worry much about fresh caught fish unless they are on the list. Point in case. Yesterday my buddy calls me to ask about something to take for his cold he has. So I talk a little bit about some remedies (even though none have been proven) and then he tells me he's been eating healthy and he doesn't know why he's sick. So I ask what he's been eating. TUNA!!! About 15 cans a week. Syptoms included: weakness, nausea, abdominal pain. Flu-like symptoms. If there is a warning on cigarrettes, why isn't there a warning for tuna??? Same thing happened to me in high school when I was eating alot of tuna.


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## wcalcaterra (Jan 25, 2007)

This is getting way too complicated! If you don't want to eat the fish then just practice catch and release, its still fun. For people like me who will eat them anyway, its kinda nice to have that glow!


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## SPITFIRE (Feb 10, 2005)

here we are worried about the fish we eat and most everything we eat in grocery store is filled with chemicals we cant even pronounce! :yikes:


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## MSUICEMAN (Jan 9, 2002)

USMarine1171 said:


> Still though, I wouldn't worry much about fresh caught fish unless they are on the list. Point in case. Yesterday my buddy calls me to ask about something to take for his cold he has. So I talk a little bit about some remedies (even though none have been proven) and then he tells me he's been eating healthy and he doesn't know why he's sick. So I ask what he's been eating. TUNA!!! About 15 cans a week. Syptoms included: weakness, nausea, abdominal pain. Flu-like symptoms. If there is a warning on cigarrettes, why isn't there a warning for tuna??? Same thing happened to me in high school when I was eating alot of tuna.


yikes, thats a lot of tuna! if someone watches the news and all that one should hopefully maybe for-the-love-o'-god know that you really shouldn't have it that much.

i agree, if they aren't on a fish advisory, eat em up. I'd REALLY wish there was a standard way of checking fish for pollutants (ie only use the standard edible portions). that way we really know what we're doing.


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## snowman11 (Nov 21, 2006)

SPITFIRE said:


> here we are worried about the fish we eat and most everything we eat in grocery store is filled with chemicals we cant even pronounce! :yikes:


LMFAO! Never really thought of it that way.

I'm gonna go dump some fertilizer on the garden now.


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## MSUICEMAN (Jan 9, 2002)

just because they have crazy names doesn't mean they are bad for ya... heck you can make almost any molecule sound crazy.... lets pick one of the simplest and most common:
Dihydrogen Monoxide
to some it would sound creepy and like a bad thing, unfortunately without WATER you can't survive.


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## Johnr (Dec 13, 2000)

The risks are the same as eating as letting your kids and yourself eat produce grow in countries that hate our guts.


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