Shiner surfperch caught beside the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard carried about 1,500 to 1,800 parts per billion of PCBs, more than 10 times the state’s no-eating line of about 120, according to 2024 testing presented by the San Francisco Estuary Institute and reported by NBC Bay Area.
Scientist Jennifer Sun presented the results Oct. 21 in Berkeley at the Regional Monitoring Program meeting. The shipyard is a federal Superfund site, and a slide called the concentrations “extremely high.” Surfperch from eight other places, including another near Hunters Point, carried about 400 ppb or less, NBC said, citing the chart. The state already tells everyone not to eat shiner surfperch from the bay. Managing senior scientist Diana Lin told NBC the full report has not been released. The 2024 round was the program’s ninth since 1994. Baywide, average shiner surfperch carried about 200 ppb of PCBs, still above the no-eating line. A fat-adjusted measure shows PCBs in the bay have fallen about 2.4% a year since 1994, Sun’s slides said, though Lin said in a Thursday interview that for PCBs and mercury, “we’re not seeing declining trends over the last, over a decade.”
Mercury in striped bass has shown “little change in concentration over 50 years of monitoring,” including tests from 1971-72, and the 2024 average was close to the level at which the state says women 18 to 49 and children should eat none. The institute also found 21 of 40 tested PFAS chemicals; California has no PFAS fish warning yet, Lin said, and by the strictest other-state limits almost all samples exceeded a one-meal-per-day threshold, with some South Bay samples too high to eat even once a week. An Oct. 26 study with the University of Toronto found microplastic particles in 20 of 25 striped bass fillets, about four particles in the meat of the average fish. State advice, updated in 2023, also says no one should eat Mississippi silverside, Pacific sardine or topsmelt from the bay, or any fish from Richmond’s Lauritzen Channel, and that women 18-49 and children 1-17 should not eat sharks, striped bass or white sturgeon. Lin said anecdotal reports suggest some people still eat parts other than the skinless fillet, where PCBs concentrate.