Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed Pacific to U.S.

LOS ANGELES -- The mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination from Japan's crippled nuclear plant across the Pacific to the United States 6,000 miles away, the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher of Stony Brook University, one of the researchers reporting the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than had been measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. The nuclear fallout had not been expected to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolize and shed radioactive substances.

One of the largest and speediest fish, Pacific bluefin tuna can grow to 10 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds. They spawn off the Japan coast and swim east at breakneck speed to school in waters off California and Mexico.

Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan, where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sashimi can fetch $24 per piece at Tokyo restaurants. Japanese consume 80 percent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna. -- AP