The daily Astorian., August 27, 2015, Image 32

GRAB BAG book shelf • glimpse • wildlife • pop culture • words • q&a • food • fun
Thunnus alalunga
Albacore tuna
By LYNETTE RAE McADAMS
Photo by Matt Love
The Merry Time Bar and Grill in Astoria is an excellent place to watch football, pro or college, particularly if you don’t have cable
television.
A G LIMPSE I NSIDE
An occasional feature by MATT LOVE
Merry Time Bar and Grill
Here we go again. Foot-
ball season in America.
Grown men wearing over-
sized jersey and screaming
in public? Are we ready? I’m
not. Wasn’t the Super Bowl
just concluded?
I’m sitting in the Merry
Time Bar and Grill in Astoria
on a Sunday morning and
some nondescript NFL pre-
season game blares away.
The announcers crank out
one cliché after another,
but for some reason, I find
the trite commentary com-
forting. “Nickel package”
and “He’s good in space”
sound like working class
poetry of the gridiron to my
ears.
The Merry Time is an ex-
cellent place to watch foot-
ball, pro or college, particu-
larly if you don’t have cable
television like me. The food
is good and inexpensive in
here, the service friendly
and efficient. On my most
recent visit a server also
gave me a homemade book-
mark and a piece of cake
from her going away party.
When I asked her about the
impending football season,
she just shrugged and said,
“I could care less.”
My only reservation
about the Merry Time is
this: Any potential custom-
er should be forewarned
when a Notre Dame game
airs in the bar. There is a
certain male fan bedecked
in Irish clothing from head
to toe who stands up from
his table and screams and
motions “first down!” every
time Notre Dame’s offense
registers a first down —
even when they are trailing
by three touchdowns in the
third quarter.
The man does this for an
entire three-hour telecast.
His wife just sits there and
drinks her beer in silence.
It is quite possibly the most
obnoxious boisterous ges-
ture I have ever witnessed in
a bar. But then again, it was so
memorably obnoxious that I’m
writing it about now and won-
dering when Notre Dame plays
its opener because I might just
have to see him in action again.
With a cocktail for the sideshow,
of course. It’s actually better
watching than a football game
on television.
Matt Love lives in Astoria and is
the author/editor of 14 boos about
Oregon, including “A Nice Piece of
Astoria: A Narrative Guide” and “The
Great Birthright: An Oregon Novel.”
They are available at
coastal bookstores and through
www.nestuccaspitpress.com
One of the smallest species
of tuna (and actually a member
of the mackerel family), the al-
bacore makes its home in every
tropical and temperate ocean in
the world, as well as the Med-
iterranean Sea. Prized for its
delicate meat, which is enjoyed
both fresh and canned, it is a
hiJhly souJht-after ¿sh, popular
in both the commercial and rec-
reational ¿shinJ industries.
A stunning, metallic dark
blue on its backside, with glis-
tening, silvery-white sides and
underbelly, Thunnus alalunga
(also called the long-¿n tuna)
can reach lengths up to 4 feet
and can weigh up to 80 pounds
(though 2 feet long and 25
pounds is more typical). One of
the fastest swimmers in the sea,
it is a ¿sh designed for speed,
with a stout, torpedo-shaped
body and long stream-lined pec-
toral ¿ns.
Though it belongs to a group
of cold-blooded creatures, the
Photo by Lynette Rae McAdams
A sea of albacore tuna await their fate
at the Sportsmen’s Cannery in Seaview,
Washington.
albacore has an atypical circula-
tory system that keeps its body
temperature above the tem-
perature of the water, allowing
for the extra tissue oxygenation
that promotes its agility: When
its crescent-shaped tail pumps
through the water, this ¿sh can
move 50 mph.
A female albacore lays her
eggs in the open sea, where she
releases two million eggs per
season, in two sets, two days
apart. If fertilized, the eggs will
take two days to hatch. Though
most are caught by the time they
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are six or seven years old, in the
wild, these tuna can survive 10
to 12 years.
A highly migratory species,
albacore swim long distances
and travel in schools that can
exceed 19 miles in width. In the
1orth Paci¿c, they begin their
annual journey in the spring
near the coast of Japan, moving
to inshore waters off the U.S.
Paci¿c coast by late summer in
the fall, they reverse the journey.
As a food source, albacore
is a heart-healthy choice of
protein, low in fat and choles-
terol, but, like other ¿sh, it can
accumulate
methylmercury
within its tissues — a poison
produced from the burning of
fossil fuels, namely coal, which
can be passed to humans during
consumption. The good news:
Recent studies by NOAA indi-
cate that tuna pulled from the
waters of Washington, Oregon
and California, all have much
lower mercury levels today than
in previous years.
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August 27, 2015 | coastweekend.com | 23