Yummy Blue Plate Special: Gowanus Canal Bluefish

Don't look now, but people--well, at least, a handful of people--are fishing in the Gowanus Canal, catching fish and taking them home and eating them. We are not making this up. A very reliable source tells us that the fishermen put their hooks in the water near the Third Street Bridge and that they are catching bluefish up to a foot long. This, in and of itself would be interesting if that were the beginning and end of the story. It is not. The men are said to take bring the fish home and eat them. We're told that they say that since the fish don't actually live in the Gowanus (they swim into the Gowanus and leave), they are no less safe than any other fish that might come out of the East River or New York Harbor. Personally, we've always wondered about the safety of eating fish caught in, uh, local waters, but we know that plenty of people fish in Red Hook, Long Island City and other locales. But, the Gowanus Canal? It's unknown if the fishermen are older people who figure that their time horizons are shorter anyway. No more than one meal of bluefish from the East River per month is recommendation because of PCB concerns. We do not believe there are established standards for Gowanus Canal Bluefish. Foot-long bluefish, friends.

(The fish picture here is a bluefish. The water is that of Gowanus Canal. However, the fish and the water did not previously exist in the same photo.)