Let’s say you’ve been perusing the Internet and come across panicked posts declaring the Pacific Ocean a radioactive nightmare. Maybe you’ve watched scary-looking videos purporting to prove greatly increased levels of radiation on Central Coast beaches or seen maps supposedly highlighting the onslaught of radioactivity arcing its way to the U.S. All this fear stems from the Fukushima Daiishi nuclear disaster, of course, which was triggered by the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and resulting tsunami. All three events caused catastrophic injury, death and destruction. That is true. However, the allegations that we’re being fried by radiation are not, according to the science-y types who study these things.

On the popular -– and fun! -– Southern Fried Science website, marine ecologist Andrew David Thaler busts myth after myth from the viral blog post 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima. “The author had 28 chances to make a single reasonable point,” Thaler writes, “and every single one rang hollow.” The ocean’s creatures, from sea lions to sea stars, are suffering, but no evidence links the problems to the Fukushima Daiishi nuclear reactor meltdown.

Zooming around Facebook -– a happy thing, to see science shared –- is the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s FAQ (authored by Ken Buessler), titled “Radiation from Fukushima.” In it, Buesseler tackles the big questions, starting with the state of fisheries off Japan and the U.S. West Coast. Short answer: Japan’s coastal fisheries remain closed, since some species, particularly the bottom-dwelling ones, are cesium-contaminated. But for the general Humboldt populace concerned about ingesting radioactive fish, our local fish are no worse off, and even those Pacific bluefin tuna who feed near Japan are likely fine, due to the way cesium flushes out as they swim.

On his Skeptoid post dissecting the hyperbole, Mike Rothschild emphasizes that of the fish on the West Coast of the U.S., only Pacific bluefin tuna have been found to have any kind of radiation increase –- and only in trivial amounts, “far lower than the radiation that naturally occurs in potassium rich foods like bananas.”

(You shouldn’t be eating bluefin tuna anyway. Overfishing has brought the fishery to the point of near-collapse. Stick to albacore, and buy local seafood whenever you can.)

If you’re really concerned about eating radioactive fish, Deep Sea News’ Kim Martini suggests you stop swilling down those Baltic Herring fish oil pills and Black Sea caviar, as those delicacies are more likely to be contaminated by Chernobyl-related radiation than Pacific fish are from the Fukushima Daiishi reactor meltdown.

As far as worries that we’re all going to get cancer and die from the radioactive nightmare, Martini says straight out, “…radiation probably has reached the West Coast.”

So what kind of accelerated risk are we facing? None at all, Martini says.

“Even within 300 km of Fukushima, the additional radiation that was introduced by the Cesium-137 fallout is still well below the background radiation levels from naturally occurring radioisotopes. By the time those radioactive atoms make their way to the West Coast it will be even more diluted and therefore not dangerous at all,” he writes.

Read the whole thing if you want to get more science (you can follow the links to Martini’s sources for even more) but the takeaway is this: Unless we’re talking bottom-dwellers off the coast of Japan, fish from the Pacific Ocean are safe to eat and, despite the hype, the West Coast is not currently being fried by radioactivity.

Check out today’s Coastal Currents podcast for further discussion on this and more.