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Glow-in-the-dark salmon startles Alaskans |
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| USA: September 10, 2001 | ||
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - An eerie glow from salmon drying in a smokehouse startled some residents of Holy Cross, a Yupik Eskimo village of about 300 on the lower Yukon River in Alaska.
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Sandra Dementieff found that some of the salmon in her smokehouse was glowing in the dark, something she had never seen before, according to a report by the Tundra Drums, the region's newspaper. Some villagers wondered if nuclear contamination in the Bering Sea was to blame. But officials from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the glow was from phosphorescent marine bacteria that had spread over the fish. Ted Meyers, chief fish pathologist for the Department of Fish and Game, said he found the luminescent bacteria when he studied a piece of the glowing salmon sent to his Juneau office from Holy Cross. He said studies of the bacteria show that it is spread when fish are stored in unusually moist conditions. Fish racks in rural Alaska probably hold many more salmon with luminescent bacteria than people realize, because the glow is hidden by the lack of nighttime darkness during the summer, Meyers said. "A lot of times, I think, it just goes unobserved," he said. Whether the glowing salmon is safe to eat remains debatable, Meyers said. "The sample I got wasn't something I'd want to eat. It didn't pass my smell test," he said.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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