Small fish, big splash.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - What the quest for cheap labor took away from the Oregon tuna industry, a government health warning is helping to put back.

The bottom fell out of the albacore market in the late 1990s, as big canneries along the West Coast moved offshore to places such as Fiji, which were closer to where the big fish were being caught and where labor was cheaper, said Nick Furman, administrator of the Oregon Albacore Commission.

The canneries decided it was problematic to ship the smaller, Oregon-caught fish to these offshore plants, he said. "The boats came in, and no one wanted to buy. So they just sat there."

The fishermen realized quickly that they had to develop new markets for their fish, Furman said. Many fishermen started selling directly to consumers, right off of their boats.

But that wasn't enough to keep the industry going. Fishermen still needed a long-term plan. It took shape over the next few years, creating a brand for Oregon tuna that emphasized quality. The efforts got a boost, ironically, in 2003 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted a warning to expectant mothers not to consume too much albacore tuna because of concerns about mercury.

This created an opportunity for Oregon fishermen and canneries - in much the same way that negative publicity about farmed salmon caused the demand for wild fish to skyrocket.

Oregon-caught tuna have much lower mercury levels than larger, and older, tuna that are caught in the deep waters of the south Pacific, Furman said.

"That message is starting to get out into the public," he said, "And people that are concerned about it are looking for a different product. They're finding it in Oregon fish."

Ryan Rogers, who owns Eugene's Fishermen's Market, carries Oregon tuna. And he has a ready answer when he gets questions about mercury from customers.

"The bigger the fish, the more mercury it's going to have," he said. "Fish that are 18 pounds or bigger are going to have noticeable or trace amounts of mercury. Smaller than that and the trace is so small it's not really an issue."

"Mothers are the ones who are asking," he added. "And they're the ones who should be asking."

Nationally branded tuna, such as Starkist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, has higher levels of mercury because it's made from older, fatter fish, said Michael Morrissey, director of the Oregon State University Seafood Lab in Astoria.

Methylmercury, mercury's organic form, binds to tissue in fish, which absorb it in their gills from the environment and things they eat in the water. As the fish ages, it naturally accumulates more mercury, which is why Morrissey's tests of 100 Pacific Northwest albacore showed last year that the fish caught here are lower in mercury than the national brands. On average, the West Coast fish contained 0.14 parts per million of mercury, well below older albacore's average of 0.358 parts per million and the FDA guideline of 1.0.

The Oregon Albacore Commission, which in 1999 became the state's 29th commodity commission, uses the mercury information in its marketing efforts.

Clever fish peddlers also have used the numbers as a way to convince consumers to buy local.

Bill Carvalho runs Eureka, Calif.-based Carvalho Fisheries, which buys tuna, Dungeness crab and salmon directly from fishing boats at receiving docks such as Newport. He got interested in mercury in 2003, when a Reader's Digest story featured a doctor treating patients for mercury toxicity.

Mercury exposure is linked to neurological damage in babies, according to a report published the same year by the Mercury Policy Projects, which has been pressuring the FDA ever since to crack down on the tuna industry.

Carvalho's family of five was eating some 400 cans of tuna a year, he said, so he wanted to make sure that the tuna his company bought and canned was safe.

"If our tuna was of the same mercury content of the national brands, we were very highly overdosing ourselves," he said.

After extensive tests, Carvalho was relieved to come to the same conclusion Morrissey did. Then he took the idea a step further, opening a line of canned seafood products called "Wild Planet," featuring seafood "in harmony with wild ocean systems, products only from sustainable fisheries," as he describes it.

And, in tuna's case, low in mercury. Carvalho markets the cans from fish between 25 and 30 pounds as "low mercury" and smaller fish, between nine and 12 pounds, are deemed "minimal mercury." Three years later, the company's sales of Wild Planet products are in "six figures," he said, declining to provide specifics, and the product has been featured in Time magazine and on the Today Show.

Carvalho is eager to snatch away the declining sales of national brands, he says, with the mercury message but also local tuna's health benefits: troll-caught albacore has much higher levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than the national brands, because it's raw packed rather than pre-cooked, he says.

But the mercury in national brand tuna should be enough to keep people away from it, Carvalho argues. The national average in tuna tested by the federal government is 0.358 parts per million, but individual cans aren't tested so the numbers don't account for cans that may exceed the government's maximum.

Canned tuna is consumed in 90 percent of U.S. households and accounts for 25 to 35 percent of all fish consumption in the U.S., according to the mercury report. The industry does $1 billion in annual sales, and Americans consume more than a billion pounds of canned tuna each year, the most frequently consumed fish among women of child-bearing age and eaten by children at a rate of twice that of any other fish.

The Mercury Project's report asserts that more than 6 percent of white albacore tuna samples contain mercury at or above the 1.0 limit, and should be pulled from grocery store shelves but aren't even tested.

"There are cans on the market that are over 1.0 that are not being pulled," Carvalho said. "Even at 0.358, a 100-pound person can't eat six ounces of it a week (before exceeding health levels.)"

And even at the low levels in fish caught off of Oregon, enough mercury exists to limit how much people should eat per week. But that hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the product, says Dwight Collins, owner of Newman's Fish Market. His only problem with tuna these days is finding enough of it.

"We're getting the typical amount of customers calling to get orders in," he said. "Business would be better if there was a more consistent supply."

Indeed, warm ocean currents have driven tuna offshore this summer, where there's more food.

Even during the peak month of August, he was scrounging for local tuna, said Rogers.

Furman said that marketing tuna as a fresh fish to a country that's known it mostly as a canned product hasn't been easy. But he can point to a growing acceptance of it in restaurants, as well in fish markets, where taste matters as much as health concerns. "It's slowly becoming a feature in the food culture, especially at white tablecloth restaurants," he said.

Laura Anderson just opened a new bayfront market and grill in Newport, called Local Ocean Seafoods, with partner Al Pazar, who owns the Krab Kettle in Florence. "Know your fish" is the company's slogan, and each selection lists not only how it's caught (hook and line versus net, for example) but where it was caught and even what boat snagged it.

Anderson says business is booming with people who appreciate "knowing their fish," but she doesn't field concerns about tuna.

"I get very few direct questions about mercury," she said. "It kind of surprises me."

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or rgcoast@ oregonfast.net.