Shannon Moneo
Special to The Globe and Mail
August 17th, 2006
Victoria -- A federal study is looking at various kinds of seafood eaten in Vancouver Island native communities to determine whether the dietary staples are contaminated by toxic chemicals.
Many natives eat seafood daily, but no one knows how contaminated their food sources may be.
That point was driven home when some elders from the Ahousaht First Nation, from western Vancouver Island, asked the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Health Canada whether harbour seals were safe to eat. The elders had heard that Canada's whale-eating Inuit have high levels of contaminants, compared with southern Canadians.
When government officials had no answers for the Ahousaht, Health Canada provided $190,000 for a one-year study, which will wrap up next August.
The work is being led by Peter Ross, a 43-year-old marine mammal toxicologist who raised alarm bells about the marine environment in 2000 when he found that B.C. killer whales were one of the most chemically-contaminated animals in the world.
During a three-week period, Dr. Ross and his research team visited five coastal communities ranging from the isolated to the urban -- Ahousaht, Campbell River, Nanaimo, Port Renfrew and Quatsino Sound -- to examine the sea life used as food by local natives.
The team took slices of skin and fat from harbour seals, sockeye salmon fillets, the hepatopancreas organ and muscle of Dungeness crab, and whole butter clams. The samples are being tested for levels of toxic chemicals such as dioxins, furans, PCBs, flame retardants and DDT, all of which can accumulate in the bodies of humans and animals.
"We're out there to allay concerns. It's not all about shutting down their food supply in favour of supermarket food," said Dr. Ross, who works for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in North Saanich.
"There's probably very important needs that first nations have to derive from traditional foods," he said, noting that more than 100 B.C. coastal native communities rely on seafood for their diet.
In the next phase of the study, 60 native people from the five Vancouver Island communities will document their seafood-eating habits.
Tom Child, a 27-year-old member of the Kwakiutl First Nation who is working on his master's degree in science, is helping with the study.
"The bottom line is, we don't have data on this region," said Mr. Child, who worries that industries such as logging and shipping have endangered traditional food sources around Vancouver Island.
Quatsino First Nation Chief Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi, who was raised in the traditional style on the northwest tip of the island, said that in a recent seven-day period, she ate salmon and crab on four of the days.
She wonders what will become of native culture if the study finds that people are at risk because of eating salmon, crab and clams.
But even if the study finds that traditional sea fare is toxic, native communities will still have an innate need to harvest the ocean for food, social and ceremonial purposes, she said.
"We're coming to a point of the last vestiges of what defines us," explained the 46-year-old chief.
Dr. Ross stressed that it is crucial aboriginals do not forgo traditional fare in favour of supermarket food, with its high levels of sugar that can result in health problems such as diabetes.
In some Vancouver
Island native communities, diabetes is already rampant.
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