Godzilla Tuna Alert!

Yeah – They get this big!

Post WWII as the Japanese Film industry developed in the ruins of wartime destruction – the “radioactive monster” meme became a mainstay of the industry by 1954. Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Gidorah were all derived in part, if not whole from the radioactivity unleashed from the two atomic bobs dropped on Japan during the war. The movies were hugely popular and even made it into the American market spawning American imitation – where they became embedded in the national psyche. Indeed, the last two Godzilla movies have been American productions with the Monster attacking New York City.

So what do we make of the fact that Tuna which have been radiated by the leaks at the Fukishima reactor damaged by the Tidal wave which hit Japan last year have reached the West Coast of America?

Tuna-zilla anyone? Or Sushi which glows in the dark?

Let’s hope the fear of radioactive Sushi cuts back on the over-fishing of the magnificent fish by the Japanese fleet.

Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed Pacific to U.S.

Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant to the shores of 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, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, 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 a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.