What's the Deal??

Quote from Canadian Occasional Paper No. 108 (as noted above):

There are numerous viable alternative materials for producing fishing sinkers and jigs, including tin, steel, bismuth, tungsten, rubber, ceramic, and clay. Tin, steel, and bismuth sinkers and bismuth jigs are the most common commercially available alternatives in Canada. Many of the available alternative products are currently more expensive than lead; however, switching to these products is anticipated to increase the average angler's total yearly expenses by less than 1% (~$2.00). Nevertheless, the continued availability of (cheaper) lead products has made it difficult for the manufacture and sale of nontoxic alternatives to achieve commercial viability.

Orvis sells Non-toxic split shot that is primarily tin for $9.95 (haven't counted the number of shot, but more than several dozen in multiple sizes).

Silver Creek wrote:
...at most only 3.5% of the deaths were due to lead weights. Other water birds had LESS that 3.5% lead weight ingestion. Now consider that the death rate from C&R fishing varies from 3-5% per fish per release, and some fish are caught multiple times. It then becomes apparent that a maximum 3.5% death rate from lead fishing weights in birds is probably less than the cumulative population deaths from C&R fishing in trout.

I have to ask what are the other causes of death and their rates associated with entanglement in fishing gear, trauma, disease, predation and other causes of mortality? If disease, predation and natural mortality are less than 3 - 5% in fish and waterfowl populations, then lead poisoning is significant. Yes?

I'm not saying stop all fishing in the Chesapeake Bay, or ban lead or ban anything...but personally, if an alternative is available, I will use it, and I do.

As I stated before, why add another toxin to our already stressed environment if we don't have to? Clean Coal processing still dumps Mercury into our air and water systems...so it's really not clean. Mercury is a very stable long-lived element, and PCBs do not degrade readily. (Those who fish the Housatonic are I'm sure well aware of the PCB problems in that area.)

Look in the back of the Pa. Fish & Boat Commission's Fishing Summary. If the Fish Consumption Advisory doesn't scare you, or at least give you reason to pause...then nothing I can say about lead poisoning will change your mind.

I wonder what the levels are in the Salmon River in NY? There must be tons of lead in each pool!

I admit to using lead IN my flies when I weight them for EU nymphing. However, if I am using split shot I always use tin instead of lead.

In my view, there are three issues. The major one is whether lead fishing gear is decreasing populations of water birds. The second is related to the first and is whether lead weights are decreasing populations of water fowl on rivers. The third issue is lead substitutes.

The third issue of lead substitutes comes into play only if there is a need to eliminate lead from fishing gear. To say that because there are lead substitutes, that is a reason to replace lead is putting the cart before the horse. First it must be proven that lead is decreasing populations. Population effects are the logical end points for me.

Should you chose a different end point such that even 3.5% death is unacceptable, then you must be willing to apply that end point to all your other decision processes. You should also say that because 3.5 % of caught trout die after release, we should not be allowed to fish even though that 3.5% death rate does not affect the population of trout in a river.

Nor would we allow recreational hunting because there is a greater than 3.5% rate of waterfowl that are wounded and eventually die without being harvested. A similar statistic can be done for all outdoor blood sports such as deer hunting. Once that logic becomes the logic that is used to govern outdoor sports, they will no longer be allowed.

Loons are the species that are most sensitive to lead because they eat their food whole so they are more prone to ingesting lead fishing weights from lake bottoms. So loon surveys are the ones that are most often quoted BUT they don't inhabit rivers.

I am NOT asking for data that lead is toxic. Nor am I asking for surveys that are general surveys of lead toxicity that combine lead bird shot, bullets and fishing gear.

What is pertinent to me is that lead fishing weights specifically are affecting populations of water fowl. Even better would be data specifically to fishing rivers and streams for trout or bass. After all, that is what I do. Toxic lead weights in a lake is important, but it bears no relationship to toxicity to rivers because loons don't feed on rivers.

In regards to other causes of loon deaths related to fishing gear, in the Minnesota survey discarded fishing line entanglement killed more loons that lead fishing weights, so by extension we should outlaw fishing line and especially fluorocarbon because it takes a very long time to degrade.

There is one statistic that would change my mind. That is the additive effect of incremental death rate. When a species is threatened and populations are decreasing, incremental death rates are additive and cause an incremental decrease in population. However that is not occurring in Wisconsin. Populations of the target species of loons, eagles, osprey, and swans are ALL increasing. Non a single species is decreasing.

So does anyone have data that is specific to population effects of lead fishing weights on rivers? I suspect that they would be negligible.

Should you chose a different end point such that even 3.5% death is unacceptable, then you must be willing to apply that end point to all your other decision processes. You should also say that because 3.5 % of caught trout die after release, we should not be allowed to fish even though that 3.5% death rate does not affect the population of trout in a river.


We do Not put produce millions of water foul to stock each year. So yes 3.5% is unacceptable . If 3.5% of trout are killed each year what is the percentage they are replaced next year by the hatcheries? The birds only have mother nature. Have you ever seen a animal die from lead poising? I am sure it is a slow painful way to die.

[quote author=VTflyfishing link=topic=4197.msg33170#msg33170 date=1268279270]
We do Not put produce millions of water foul to stock each year. So yes 3.5% is unacceptable . If 3.5% of trout are killed each year what is the percentage they are replaced next year by the hatcheries? The birds only have mother nature. Have you ever seen a animal die from lead poising? I am sure it is a slow painful way to die.
[/quote]

VT,

You have not countered any data that I posted, nor have you answered the central question of whether you have a consistent criteria to apply to all wildlife populations.

Since you haven't posted any studies which refute the studies from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the studies showing increasing populations of wild birds, I am at a loss as to how to reply except by examining the implications of what you posted when applied to the target species of lead fishing weights.

What you have posted is that it is OK to have a 3.5% kill rate for every trout that is Caught and released because we produce millions of trout to stock each year. If that statement is logical, then it is equally logical to artificially raise loons, eagles, osprey, swans to replace the ones who die from lead toxicity.

Would that be an acceptable solution to you? I doubt that it would be. If it is not, then you as a fisher are asking for a special privilege. It is the logical fallacy of special pleading better know as a double standard.

I don't think you realized the implication of what you just wrote. That is exactly the reason that I pointed out that there needs to be a consistency rather than emotion in discussing the subject of lead fishing weights.

If you buy into the argument that wildlife as individuals are how the impact of outdoor sports are to be judged rather than by populations, you cannot logically defend C&R fishing.

So what are they going to do to the hunters? From reading that, it seems that fishermen are the ones that are going to have to bear the burden of the threat of lead poisoning in waterfowl.

It makes more sense to me that the birds are ingesting shot gun pellets, rather than fishing weights. Also, I am curious as to how they can say with certainty that the birds are being poinsoned by fishing weights of shot gun pellets. Lead is lead correct?

Aaron they are all ready working on the hunting part by banning lead in shotgun shells when hunting for waterfowl. The issue with lead pellets that they are already in the water ways from hundereds of years of waterfowl hunting with lead.

[quote author=Silver Creek link=topic=4197.msg33172#msg33172 date=1268290967]
[quote author=VTflyfishing link=topic=4197.msg33170#msg33170 date=1268279270]
We do Not put produce millions of water foul to stock each year. So yes 3.5% is unacceptable . If 3.5% of trout are killed each year what is the percentage they are replaced next year by the hatcheries? The birds only have mother nature. Have you ever seen a animal die from lead poising? I am sure it is a slow painful way to die.
[/quote]

VT,


What you have posted is that it is OK to have a 3.5% kill rate for every trout that is Caught and released because we produce millions of trout to stock each year. If that statement is logical, then it is equally logical to artificially raise loons, eagles, osprey, swans to replace the ones who die from lead toxicity.

Would that be an acceptable solution to you? I doubt that it would be. If it is not, then you as a fisher are asking for a special privilege. It is the logical fallacy of special pleading better know as a double standard.
[/quote]

I think its a great idea to raise the birds artificially for release to replace the numbers we damage. I would agree with you that 3.5% is not that great of a number if we were not talking about endangered/ almost endangered species. I will say it again why put more poison in our water ways when we have non-toxic options?

Aaron,

Lead shot has already been banned. Steel shot is now used. It is less effective that lead so there are more cripples with steel shot.

Hunters also had to buy new shotguns or retrofit their guns with new barrels. Since lead deforms and gives a wider spread than steel, hunters also needed to buy new chokes for their shotguns. Since steel is harder than lead, it wears barrels out faster.

The difference between lead shot and lead fishing weights is that a single 12 gauge shotgun shell can have well over a hundred pellets and a duck hunter shoots thousands of pellets in an outing spread over acres of water. Compare that with the amount of lead that a fisher loses even over an entire season and there are several magnitudes of difference.

The comparison between lead shot and lead fishing weights is used by those who want to outlaw lead but they are not comparable. The shotgun hunter INTENTIONALLY shoot pounds of lead over a wide area in a short time. The fly fisher occasionally loses lead in a fly or in split shot.

The argument that the average fisher won't have to spend much money is also a false dichotomy of sorts. I quote rs0i

[quote author=rs0i link=topic=4197.msg33163#msg33163 date=1268264993]
Quote from Canadian Occasional Paper No. 108 (as noted above):

".....switching to these products is anticipated to increase the average angler's total yearly expenses by less than 1% (~$2.00)."

Orvis sells Non-toxic split shot that is primarily tin for $9.95 (haven't counted the number of shot, but more than several dozen in multiple sizes).
[/quote]

rsOi, if it is true then $2.00 is all the extra it would cost the average fisher AND it costs $9.95 to buy a single tin of non toxic split shot, what do your own numbers say about how much shot is lost by the average fisher? If that amount of shot is truly being lost by the average fly fisher, it wouldn't fill a 12 gauge shell. Again it is an example of playing fast and loose with the facts. It is EXACTLY those kinds of "facts" that are illogical.

You cannot on the one hand say that fishers are spreading a huge amount of toxic lead and on the other hand it will only cost $2.00 extra to substitute expensive tin shot to replace that huge lead loss.