Each summer, millions of people fish in the Great Lakes. And many of them eat what they catch. But a recent report from the International Joint Commission is warning people that fish from the lakes can be hazardous to their health. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, there’s evidence anglers are already taking precautions:
Transcript
Each summer, millions of people fish in the Great
Lakes. And many of them eat what they catch. But a recent report from the International Joint Commission is warning people that fish from the lakes
can be hazardous to their health. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, there’s evidence anglers are already taking precautions.
(Sound of casting)
Fisherman Pat McGuire throws a line in the direction of a few bubbles rising up in the water. This is one of his favorite fishing spots – a set of train tracks that cross over a tiny bay on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario.
There’s not much of a view – he’s within casting distance of a busy road leading into the city of Kingston.
But McGuire says it’s a hotspot for pike and smallmouth bass.
Yet when it comes time for dinner, he’ll probably leave empty handed.
“We mostly catch and release. Some of the guys keep them. I keep fish every once in a while, like pickerel. I don’t gorge myself on it, but I’m not worried about it. It’s just that I wouldn’t eat it every day for a diet.”
McGuire says he doesn’t eat as much as he would like because many of the fish in the Great Lakes are contaminated. That danger was underscored recently in a report from the International Joint Commission. The group advises governments on both sides of the border on Great Lakes issues. They say one of the major problems lies with fish consumption advisories. The advisory is a booklet which lists every polluted body of water in the state and the number and type of fish people can safely eat out of it. But Leonard Legault says the advisories aren’t always clear.
He’s the commission’s Canadian chairman. And he says sometimes the U.S. states and Canada provide different recommendations for the same lake.
He argues it’s time they sent a clear and consistent message.
“The recommendation is asking them to require that sportfish consumption advisories state plainly that eating great lakes sportfish can be dangerous
because it can lead to birth anomolies and other serious health problems.”
For instance, in Lake Ontario, fish like the chinook
salmon and large lake trout often contain PCBS, mirex and dioxin.
The Lake Ontario advisories say nobody should eat these fish.
But Legault says anglers also need to know which parts of the lakes are safe to fish in, and how to prepare a fish before eating it.
Fisherman Pat McGuire says he usually can’t tell whether a fish is contaminated or not. But he prepares every fish as if it is.
“When you clean the bottom, you take the fatty tissue and there’s a line along the side of a fish, and I cut them out. Most of the part I eat is the back, back part just in front of the tail.”
McGuire says he avoids the fatty parts of the fish because that’s where most of the contaminants settle. And he finds most anglers he talks to are just as aware of the dangers.
“Most of your guys that fish know. Most of the guys. There’s enough stuff out – pamphlets on what fish to eat out of what lakes. They’re pretty educated.”
But researcher Nancy Connelly has found there are gaps in the anglers’ knowledge. She’s a scientist at Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources. And she took a survey of 8 thousand licensed anglers
in the Great Lakes states. She found 83 percent were aware of the health
advisories. But when she asked anglers in New York about the
guidelines for women and children, almost half didn’t know them.
“Of those people who said they were aware of the health advisory, 52 percent correctly could identify what the maximum number of fish meals women of
childbearing age and children under 15 should eat.”
Connelly says that’s a problem, because the anglers decide which fish to bring home. As a result, the commission says advisories must be
distributed to women directly. The group is also calling for the creation of
community education programs to reach other uninformed groups.
That can include Hispanic anglers, Native Americans,
and those with lower incomes. But even if everyone learns of the danger, commission chairman Leonard Legault says that won’t be enough.
“The real issue is to clean up the lakes, to get the toxic substances out of them that lead to contaminated fish.”
(Sound up of McGuire)
But in the meantime, anglers must rely on scientists to tell them what they should and should not eat. And the anglers don’t always listen.
The Cornell study found 25 percent of the fishermen had recently eaten fish that the advisories listed as off-limits.
Fishermen Pat Maguire is among them. He occasionally eats carp – a fish with the highest level of toxins.
But despite the warnings, he and many other anglers continue to take the risk.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly
in Kingston, Ontario.