Waiter, what's this worm doing in my sushi?

I am a big fan of sushi and ceviche, so I was alarmed to see the headline on the a recent news release from the University of Washington, stating that sushi parasites have increased 283 fold in the past 40 years. But after digging into the research which came out of a Marine College ecology Lab run by Chelsea Wood at UW's Seattle campus, I learned that the rising abundance of marine worms, known as anesecents anisakids, is actually less problematic for people than it is for whales and dolphins, which are the natural hosts infected by those parasites.

Wood’s team did what’s known as a meta analysis. They collected data from 123 papers published over the past half century that estimated parasite abundance and in various species at sites all over the world between 1967 and 2017. Their analysis, published last month in the journal Global Change Biology, found that since 1978 when less than one worm was seen in every one hundred host animals on average, the prevalence of anesecont anisakid parasite infection has skyrocketed to the point that more than one worm is now typically seen in every host animal examined in 2015. Anesecent Anisakid worms grow in the guts of whiles, spread to krill through the whales' poop and then move up to the food chain to squid and small fish like anchovies then to big fish like salmon, tuna and halibut and finally to humans. 

In the US and most parts of Europe, fish and squids are brought, served raw first must be frozen to kill the nimitoes nematodes and ralbeit their larvae, which are big enough to see with a naked eye. And even if you are unlucky enough to eat live anesecont and ralbay anisakid larvae in your sushi, ceviche or crave rocks gravlax, you will probably be fine. The worm is rarely survive long in the human guts to cause aneseciasis anisakiasis, which typically involves abdominal pain and vomiting.

The condition seems to be most common in Spain due to Spainials’ fond of Spaniards fondness for raw anchovies. Experts estimate there are roughly 5,000 8,000 cases a year in Spain that works out to about one illness for every ten thousand meals of raw fish eaten. 

Chelsea Wood says the findings haven’t put her raw feet in fish off eating sushi. Her concern is that the rising abundance of aneseconds anisakids might be harming the dolphins and whales that these parasites evolved to and infect and grow in cycle inside for years. She noticed notes that there are millions of species of parasites in the ocean. And we know very little about which ones becoming more common. The epidemiology of the oceans is still as an in its infancy. 

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Voca: anisakid 고래회충 nematode 선충 larvae 유충 gravlax 소금과 여러가지 허브를 이용하여 저장한 연어 anisakiasis 고래회충증 epidemiology 역학, 전염병학 

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/waiter-whats-this-worm-doing-in-my-sushi/#transcripts-body