PORT HURON TIMES- HERALD 3/24/06 - We got the lead out of our gas tanks decades ago. Is it time to get it out of our tackle boxes?
Lead contamination of the Great Lakes began falling in the mid-80s after rising steadily since the arrival of Europeans a couple of centuries ago. What reversed the trend was banning lead in vehicle fuels.
But we're still throwing a couple tons of lead into our water each year. In the process, we endanger wildlife and ourselves.
A recent study in Minnesota adds some weight to the anti-lead argument.
On five popular walleye lakes, researchers figured fishermen are leaving behind a ton of lead sinkers and other tackle every year.
Two things surprised them: Anglers don't lose much tackle to snags or broken lines. Collectively, Minnesota's resident and visiting anglers are turning the state's lakes into junkyards.
"I was amazed at how little tackle anglers are losing out there," Paul Radomski, a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fish biologist, said. "Yet, even at the very low loss rates we found, the amount of lead ending up in the lakes is incredible."
He estimated anglers lose something like a lead sinker or jig head once about every 40 hours of fishing.
Thousands of anglers spread across Minnesota lose eight or nine tons of sinkers and jigs every year, though.
In Lake Mille Lacs, the survey found more than a million bits of lead were left behind between 1983 and 2004. Each weighs a fraction of an ounce, but if you scraped it into a pile, it is about nine tons.
And each of those million little bits could kill a loon, according to a famous Michigan study of the toxic metal's effects on wild birds. Lead can damage nervous and reproductive systems of all mammals and birds. Birds such as loons and swans can die within a few days of ingesting a lead sinker.
Michigan researchers have also shown one of four loons die from lead poisoning, most from fishing tackle. Autopsies on dead adult loons recovered in six New England states from 1987 to 2002 found a quarter had died after ingesting lead fishing tackle. On heavily fished lakes, more than half of the dead birds were killed by lead in fishing gear.
The solution is obvious.
A bill introduced in the Michigan House would curb lead tackle, banning the sale of lead tackle in the state by 2008. In 2009, it would ban lead fishing tackle in waters.
The bill was referred to the House Natural Resources Committee in January. Since, it has been as lively as a loon that has chewed up a couple of quarter-ounce swivel sinkers.
Previous efforts to ban lead tackle elsewhere have run into opposition of fishing tackle manufacturers.
It should be clear from the ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting that getting the lead out only created new profit opportunities for ammunition makers.
Already, some fishing tackle - mainly sinkers - is available in unleaded. While arguments persist over the performance of nonlead shotgun pellets, it's hard to claim a brass or polymer fishing weight isn't as effective as a lead one.
Contact Michael Eckert at 989-6264 or at meckert@gannett.com
