Fish and Rice

In Hawaii, 50 lbs is a small fish.

My father, being an avid fisherman, has always provided the family with plentiful quantities of otado (skipjack), ahi (yellowfin), mahi (dorado), and ono (wahoo). Fish was served a million ways: raw, seared, broiled, grilled (do I sound like forest gump?), but the one thing that never changed was that we always eat every meal with sticky white rice.

So yesterday, every meal was a different kind of tuna, and it got me thinking that as I plan to have children in a year or two, I might need to cut tuna out of my diet. 4 oz per week is already 80% of what the EPA says is a healthy dosage (if you can actually have a healthy dosage of mercury).

But what about Hawaiian fish? Could Hawaii have less mercury in its waters than lets say, Tuna out of Ecuador?

Well I finally found a study by the Hawaii Dept of Health. If I am pregnant, planning to become pregnant, or a young child I:

CAN NOT eat marlin
I can eat one serving of tuna once every two weeks
I can eat Mahi (dorado/dolphin fish) ever week

This totally crimps my style, but, if the other alternative is mercury poisoning, not much choice. Gonna go eat some rice for breakfast.