Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Fish Consumption Bans

This really is sickening:
http://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/o...ons/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories

It has prevented me from buying a fishing boat for several years. I am still on the fence about it.

PCB's, Dioxins, Mercury......What more?

None of those will hurt the boat.

Really though, I just looked at your link and that's insane. Where is all the pollution coming from? It basically limits consumption to 8oz./per month for fish coming from the Gulf.

Someone needs to be paying heavy fines.

There are also advisories on fish consumption here too but I'm calling a bluff on some of them, Fort patric henry reservoir is up stream of cherokee reservoir. Fort Pat has no advisory, and cherokee has no advisory but John Sevier reservior does and it's right between the other two. Therer is no industry or anything on that small reservoir, it's almost all wilderness and a few farms.

WHERE DO CONTAMINANTS COME FROM?
Contaminants end up in water in a variety of ways:

Industrial and municipal discharges, agricultural practices, and storm water runoff can all deposit harmful substances directly into the water.
Rain can wash chemicals from the land or air into streams and rivers. These contaminants are then carried downstream into lakes, reservoirs and estuaries.
Fish take in these substances in several ways, and their contaminant levels depend on factors like species, size, age and location.

Mercury, for example, is naturally converted by bacteria into methylmercury. Fish absorb methylmercury mostly from their food, but also from the water as it passes over their gills. Generally, larger and older fish have had more time to bioaccumulate mercury from their food and the water than smaller and younger fish. In addition, large predatory fish (like sharks and swordfish) near the top of marine food chains are more likely to have high levels of mercury than fish lower in marine food chains due to the process of biomagnification.

Fish can also absorb organic chemicals (such as PCBs, dioxins and DDT) from the water, suspended sediments, and their food. In contaminated areas, bottom-dwelling fish are especially likely to have high levels of such toxins because these substances run off the land and settle to the bottom. These organic chemicals then concentrate in the skin, organs and other fatty tissues of fish. Wild striped bass, bluefish, American eel, and seatrout tend to be high in PCBs, since they are bottom-tending fish often found in contaminated rivers and estuaries.

http://seafood.edf.org/common-questions-about-contaminants-seafood

I meant much more specifically...

Several industry polluters in the Dallas area have been cited heavily in the last 30 years for dumping untold amounts of contaminants into the Trinity River which flows to the Gulf of Mexico.

The San Jacinto river in the Houston area always has a stench.

Buffalo Bayou being the headwaters for the Houston Ship Channel is beyond help.

Every waterway in the Houston area wreaks of pollutants. Downstream is Texas City & Galveston, certainly no poster children for environmental purity.

And last, but certainly the heaviest hitter is an area known as Bolivar Roads Anchorage at the mouth of the Galveston Bay area. There, tankers go to take on ballast, lay at anchor & allow the waves to slosh the cleaning chemicals in their tanks. Once done they open the valves & into the water the waste goes.

It is quite pathetic to see this happening all around us. Those of you who live in still clean areas should be thankful & bask in it.

A lot of NYS is just as bad. Glad to live where I do for sure.

It's insane they can still get away with this. I was really expecting a response citing relaxed environmental standards on industry in Mexico as responsible for pollution in the Gulf. I had no idea Texas was such a mess. I grew up in the rust belt along the Great Lakes and now live in the un-industrialized North East. Hell, they tore out almost all the rail lines in costal MA. Both here and back home, the major source of river pollution is failed or grossly underperforming septic systems. Long gone are the days of rivers burning.

I spent the winter fishing Highland county, Florida for largemouth bass. Every launching ramp has an advisory posted-6 ounces of bass per month and none for women of childbearing age. Does wonders for catch and release fishing! The state advisory is 36 pages long.

We just have radiation from japan

Thats BS I've been eating fish from Ny all my life with no ill effect

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This.


More catch and release fishing=more fish to be caught = Time to buy that boat!

I used to fish NYS lake Ontario for trout and salmon and everything we caught was subject to consumption advisories or outright eating bans. A biologist fronm Sea Grant told me that the bans would never be lifted, even if the lake was pristine. His reasoning was that the Indians and Canadians would have nets in the water if the the fish could be sold! He did say that long lived bottom dwellers like lakers "glowed in the dark". Actually the problem was PCBs and heavy metal contamination.

All of the gulf coast states have long and wretched records of pollution control.

What the hell do you expect?

The problems with mercury, lead, dioxins and PCBs are hard to handle and even a lot of Minnesota where there is no industrial activity whatsoever feeding them directly into the watershed still have consumption advisories.

Losing as important a food source as fish is a public health crisis that is just now getting the public's attention now that it s really biting us on the ass. It's been a problem for a long time though.

Kodak employed a lot of people but they also dumped all kinds of crap into Lake Ontario.