There’s a common rule of thumb that it’s safe to harvest and eat shellfish during months that have an “r” in their names: September through April. But on the Kodiak road system, researchers are finding that’s just not true.
All over the world, when eating shellfish, you’ll often hear a version of the “r” rule.
“The old saying, ‘only eat oysters in months with an r,’ isn’t just foodie folklore, it’s advice that dates back at least 4,000 years," reported CBS News Sacramento.
"Lots of people swear by this rule, only eat raw oysters in months that end in months that end in r," reported by WUSA9 in Maryland.
"Have you ever heard the old wives’ tale, that oysters are best eaten in a month that contains an r?" asked a reporter in the United Kingdom for Warner Brothers International Television.
But last month on Oct. 8 – as in October, with an “R” – Andie Wall and the environmental team at Kodiak Area Native Association [KANA] found blue mussels with toxins at more than two times over the regulatory limit at Karl Armstrong camp near Chiniak at 201 micrograms per 100 grams. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says any shellfish with more than 80 micrograms per 100 grams of toxin in it is unsafe for human consumption.
On Sept. 5, also an “R” month – they found a mussel there with the second highest concentration of the toxin the KANA team had ever seen on Kodiak beaches since they began monitoring, at 12 times the FDA threshold: 962 micrograms of toxin.
But Wall said they didn’t see any toxins above the regulatory limit at all this summer, from May through July – non-“R” months. The first instances they found this year were in August. She said the variability in the results was surprising.
“The variation that we’ve seen in this data is significant," Wall said. "We did these three initial blitzes. We’re taking a little bit of a break and we’re trying to digest the information and figure out, how do we communicate this really cool, really unique, really interesting data to the public in a way that’s digestible?”
Wall is referring to data from a series of sampling “blitzes” the environmental team ran at three different times over the last three months, August – October. Three KANA environmental staff members, including Isaiah Dela Cruz, collected blue mussels from 14 beaches spread across the Kodiak road system, from White Sands Beach all the way south to Pasagshak Bay, and tested them for paralytic shellfish toxins that are potentially fatal to people when eaten.
The toxin levels were also highly variable from beach to beach within the same time periods. For example, mussels sampled last month from Oct. 6 - Oct. 8 at beaches closer to Kodiak city limits, like Gibson Cove, were significantly under the FDA’s regulatory limit. On Oct. 6, Gibson Cove had blue mussels with 12 micrograms of toxin, blue mussels at Frye Point, also known as sometimes island, had 16 micrograms of toxin on Oct. 7 while those sampled at Middle Bay on Oct. 8 had 15 micrograms of toxin.
Wall said federal funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Indian General Assistance Program helped them start KANA’s environmental program back in 2018. And they were able to afford this level of sampling “blitzes” this year thanks to two other federal grants, through the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation along with MERHAB.
“And then from there we’ve applied for additional funding and had communications with tribes and communities about the need and we’re seeing that there’s a big need for environmental support and assistance for communities in our region," she said.
Wall said she hopes to continue regular, quarterly sampling at these 14 beaches. But that depends on staff availability and capacity. KANA Environmental’s harvest and hold program is still open to anyone on the island for free shellfish testing.
