YELLOWKNIFE - NWT's health department has issued a warning about eating mercury-contaminated fish from two lakes near Discovery Mine.

The warning was issued Tuesday after people were spotted fishing on Thistlewaite Lake over the weekend.An ice road to Discovery mine crosses the lake, giving people easy access.

People ice fishing at Giauque and Thistlewaite Lakes should be careful of high levels of mercury in the fish. In this picture Blaine Kelly and Scott Martin are at their ice hut on uncontaminated Banting Lake in January 2006. - NNSL file photo

"As far as we know...the fish haven't made anyone sick," said Jack MacKinnon, senior advisor for Public Health for the chief medical officer.

Health and Social Services originally issued a public health advisory for Thistlewaite and Giaque Lakes in 1994, MacKinnon said, and this was their first advisory since then. The two lakes are connected.

For Thistlewaite, people shouldn't eat more than 561 grams of lake trout per week and 525 grams of northern pike.

At Giaque, the recommendation is no more than 123 grams of northern pike, 85 grams of lake trout, 217 grams of long nose suckers and 500 grams of whitefish per week.

"It's been brought to our attention by Environment and Natural Resources that people were fishing on Thistlewaite Lake on the weekend," MacKinnon said.

Children and women of child-bearing age should be especially wary of eating mercury-contaminated fish.

"It can cause serious neurological damage," MacKinnon warned.

"The consumption level on there is at a prudent level for safety."

He added that the health department has never received any reports of people becoming sick from eating the fish from either of the two lakes since the original public health advisory was made.

MacKinnon said that samples taken in 2005 have shown that the mercury levels are decreasing in the lakes.