PLEASANT POINT – It’s not easy to tell members of an American Indian community to cut back on the amount of fish they eat.

But that was one of the messages delivered Thursday to Passamaquoddy tribal members during the first day of the first Sipayik Environmental Awareness Conference. The two-day conference, which will continue today, was designed to look at threats to the tribal environment, both natural and in the home, and was sponsored by the tribe’s environmental department.

The warning about the fish came from Valerie Ferry, the regional manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Indian Program, who gave an overview of the problem of mercury in Maine lakes and streams and the impact it has had on the fish that live there.

“That’s a difficult message to bring,” she said, noting that Passamaquoddy tradition includes relying on both freshwater and saltwater fish as a food source.

Although mercury occurs naturally in the environment, Ferry said increased amounts have been created over the years by human activity, primarily through emissions from coal-fired plants. Those emissions enter the airstream and are deposited on the land and in the water in Maine.

In the water, microorganisms convert mercury to organic compounds such as methyl mercury, the most common form of the metal that affects wildlife and humans.

“It is the methyl mercury that is ingested by fish,” Ferry said. “It gets into their fatty tissue, and it travels up the food chain. And as it moves up the food chain, it becomes more potent in its toxic components.”

The state of Maine has issued fish advisories for mercury on all lakes in the state, and the EPA has developed recommendations on limiting intakes of freshwater and saltwater fish, particularly for pregnant or nursing women.

Ferry said the EPA’s New England Regional Indian Work Group is involved with several efforts to identify tribal exposure to mercury throughout the region. The agency will install air-monitoring equipment in tribal areas to assess levels of pollution there.

In addition, it has begun a two-part study that will collect fish tissue to determine how much mercury is in local freshwater and saltwater species and also will survey tribal members to determine how much fish they eat.

“By measuring the levels of mercury in the fish, and by surveying tribal consumption, we can determine the levels being consumed by tribal members,” Ferry said. “And we may be able to find a way to reduce the risk so we can get back to subsistence fishing.”

Although other studies have shown that other animals also store toxins in their bodies, there are ways to avoid ingesting those pollutants, according to Deirdre Whitehead, the environmental director for the Pleasant Point Environmental Department.

“There are ways to manage the risk,” she said. “Avoid organ meat – livers and kidneys – and trim the fat from all meat.”

Cooking meat on a grill, on a broiler or steaming also are ways to allow the fat to drip off the meat, thereby removing the toxins stored in the fat.

Whitehead also suggested that people be cautious when collecting wild plants for food or medicine, taking care to look for telltale signs of pollution such as oil slicks on the water, or buildups of sand that could be contaminated.

She also raised a question that had to do with storage roots that Passamaquoddy people use in traditional medicines.

“If toxins are bioaccumulating in organs of animals, could it be accumulating in the storage roots of plants? It may be that the roots we use for medicine may have levels of mercury and toxins that could be harmful,” she said. “We plan to look into that in the future.”

The goal of the conference is to increase the education and knowledge about environmental issues and to make the community more aware of the tribal environmental department, which is a relatively new department, Whitehead said.

“We’re trying to get regular people to come in and talk about things that they may want more information about and actions they can take to protect their families and their households,” she said.

Other presentations included sessions on secondhand smoke, lead poisoning and community-based environmental protection of natural resources. Scheduled for today are presentations on asthma, mold and mildew, radon, basic health, prevention and safety from toxins.

As part of the conference, youngsters from the community will create a mural that will be included in the Native Peoples Art Mile that will be included with 440 other murals representing indigenous native tribes from around the world. The Native Peoples’ mural is one of three being created as part of the Art Miles project, which is designed to promote understanding and peace among children and cultures around the world.

Joanne Tawfilis, an artist and a former United Nations Environment Program executive, is working with children on the reservation to create the 12-foot mural. Tawfilis also is working with pupils at the schools in Eastport to create a second mural from the area.

The local murals will be sewn together with others from around the world and the completed mural will be presented to the United Nations Environment Program Children’s Conference on the Environment in 2003.