Pregnancy Fish & Mercury Calculator

Yes — and probably more than you are. Fish supplies omega-3 fats (including DHA), protein, iron, iodine, and choline that support your baby's brain, spinal cord, and eye development, which is why the FDA/EPA advice and ACOG both recommend 8–12 ounces (2–3 servings) of lower-mercury fish a week during pregnancy. The documented problem in the US runs the other way: in the FDA's own analysis, half of pregnant women ate fewer than 2 ounces of fish a week. Mercury is a reason to choose the right species — salmon, shrimp, canned light tuna, sardines — not a reason to skip fish altogether.

They're different fish with meaningfully different mercury levels, and the FDA/EPA chart splits them across tiers. Canned light tuna (which includes skipjack) is a Best Choice — fine as part of your 2–3 servings a week. Albacore, sold as "white" tuna in cans and as tuna steaks, is a larger, longer-lived fish that accumulates more mercury, so it's a Good Choice: limit it to 1 serving (4 oz) a week, with no other fish that week. Yellowfin sits in the same limit-to-one tier, and bigeye — common in sushi as "ahi" — is on the avoid list entirely. Check the can's label: "light" and "white" are not the same thing.

Skip the raw fish, keep the restaurant. ACOG advises avoiding raw or undercooked fish and shellfish during pregnancy — that includes raw sushi, sashimi, raw oysters, and ceviche — because of infection risks like Listeria and parasites, which is a separate issue from mercury. But sushi made with cooked ingredients is fine: shrimp tempura rolls, fully cooked eel (unagi), crab (real, cooked), and vegetable rolls are all on the table. If you're choosing cooked fish at a sushi restaurant, the mercury tiers still apply — cooked salmon is a Best Choice, while bigeye tuna is on the avoid list whether it's seared or raw.

One serving is not cause for alarm. The avoid list exists because mercury builds up gradually — in the fish over its lifetime, and in your body over repeated exposures — so the advice is about your pattern across weeks and months, not any single meal. The right response to a past serving of swordfish, shark, king mackerel, or bigeye tuna is simply to set those species aside for the rest of pregnancy and breastfeeding, not to panic or to swear off fish. If you eat high-mercury fish regularly and are concerned, mention it at a prenatal visit — but don't let one dinner turn into weeks of worry.

Check for a local advisory first. Mercury and other contaminants vary lake by lake and river by river, so states and tribes issue their own fish-eating advisories for local waters — the EPA maintains a directory of them, and your state health department posts specifics. If there's an advisory, follow it. If you can't find any advisory for that water body, the FDA/EPA advice is to eat only 1 serving (4 oz) of that locally caught fish and no other fish that week. Store-bought and restaurant fish are covered by the main chart on this page.

Yes. This tool runs entirely in your browser. The fish and servings you add are tallied on your own device and are never sent to a server, saved, or shared — close the tab and they're gone. In a post-Dobbs world we treat reproductive and pregnancy data as sensitive by default. The results are general educational information based on the FDA/EPA advice and ACOG guidance; they aren't medical advice, and your prenatal provider can tailor seafood guidance to you.