News Coverage
Mercury darkens mood of anglers
Mercury increasingly runs to fishermen's dismay
Published April 4, 2004
Whether dropping a line from a dock at a lakeside cabin or floating a trout fly while standing thigh-deep in a mountain stream, there are few activities more symbolic of living the good life than fishing.
But the pristine images associated with fishing are being muddied as anglers increasingly confront warnings from state health officials not to eat any fish they catch because of mercury contamination, said groups representing many of the nation's 45 million fishing enthusiasts.
"There is no question the mercury issue is having a dampening effect on angling because of all these fish advisories throughout the country," said Jim Martin, conservation director for Pure Fishing, the nation's largest manufacturer of fishing tackle.
The situation has spurred normally apolitical fishing organizations and the sport-fishing industry to complain to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt about the Bush administration's mercury-reduction rule announced in December.
The proposed rule would set limits for mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants that are less stringent and would take 10 years longer to achieve than reductions that EPA officials have acknowledged could be achieved using new technology.
Fishing organizations told Leavitt at a private meeting in January that their members are increasingly concerned about fish-consumption advisories and want stronger action to reduce mercury pollution.
"The sense I got from talking to Leavitt is that he has really devoted a lot of thought to this issue and that he was looking for a practical effective approach to this," said Charles Gauvin, president of Trout Unlimited, which represents 140,000 trout and salmon anglers.
The electric-power industry has resisted installing mercury-reduction equipment, saying the cost would force it to raise rates while producing little health benefit.
Forty-three states have issued fish-consumption advisories covering 500,000 miles of river and 12 million lakes.
A decade ago there were only a handful of warnings. The increase in warnings is due to greater knowledge about the health hazards of mercury and an expansion of state testing programs.
Even anglers who release the fish they catch in order to maintain fish populations are disturbed by the consumption advisories.
"All of us philosophically believe that it's a good thing that you can still go to certain places in this country and catch a truly wild native fish and put it in a frying pan and eat it under the wide open sky," Gauvin said.
The American Sportfishing Association, a trade group for the fishing-equipment industry, raised the mercury issue with its members for the first time at its semi-annual meeting earlier this month in Long Beach, Calif., Martin said.
"These are not environmental radicals," Martin said. "These are businessmen and women interested in this tremendous business of sport fishing in America."
Recreational fishing generates $116 billion a year in economic output and more than 1 million jobs, according to the association. More Americans fish than play golf or tennis combined, the group says.