http://www.theprovince.com/technolo...ic+filled+fish+guts+ruins/10827599/story.html
There is a good picture of it in the Province.
A Chilliwack fisherman thought the steelhead he hooked last week on the Vedder River would make a fine supper before he cut it open to find its body stuffed with garbage.
Jordan Butt, 32, said he felt “disgusted” by what he found Feb. 13: Shards of blue, orange, black and white plastic, some the size of a loonie, perforating the fish’s stomach and shredding its anus.
“It looked like it had been in there for a long time,” said Butt, who suspects the fish ingested the plastic in the ocean before returning to fresh water to spawn.
“I caught a fish with a cigarette butt in it once, but that’s it. I used to work in a tackle shop but I’ve just never heard of anything like this.”
Butt, who usually releases his catches, has fished the Vedder River since he was a teenager and fished for steelhead a few times each week since the season began in late December.
He said the plastic-filled steelhead put up a good fight and seemed perfectly healthy, but now he’s concerned how much plastic is polluting the Pacific Ocean and wonders if other fish will meet the same fate.
“I just have a bad feeling about it,” Butt said. “It’s a real thing, it does exist and it might be affecting us now.”
Butt thinks his catch may be an anomaly but hopes other B.C. anglers who discover foreign objects in their catches document and report what they find.
Dr. Peter Ross, director of the ocean pollution research program at the Vancouver Aquarium, said that while Butt’s discovery is a lone case, it “raises the question of a potentially significant conservation threat,” the likes of which he hasn’t seen in fish before.
“Its very troubling for a couple of reasons,” said Ross, who also suspects the steelhead ingested the plastic in the ocean.
“Number 1, there’s many pieces of plastic in this animal and number 2, they look to be large enough to cause significant problems.”
During recent research into micro-plastics, his team found that smaller plastic particles were found in the ocean at a much higher concentration near land than offshore.
He said that much of the plastic waste floating near Vancouver and in the Straight of Georgia seems to be domestic pollution rather than tsunami debris from Japan.
The aquarium is in the process of acquiring equipment to analyze the makeup of plastics found in the ocean and will conduct research over the next year to distinguish between different types of plastic in the ocean and the relative contribution of different sources of plastic in B.C.
Dave Barnes, who worked for Fisheries and Oceans Canada for 37 years and caught his first steelhead in the Vedder River in 1960, said he considers the top end of the river “almost pristine” and also thinks the plastic came from the Pacific.
He has found lures in fish stomachs in the past but nothing quite like Butt’s discovery.“Rocks are quite common, small pebbles, but no, I’ve never seen plastic like that,” Barnes said.
Nikki Rekman of the Chilliwack Vedder River Cleanup Society said volunteers have cleaned up more than 90 tonnes of garbage along the river since 2002.
During biannual cleanups, hundreds of volunteers pick up waste such as furniture, fast food packaging, household trash, electronics and shotgun shell casings.
Almost all of the trash is picked up along the river’s banks, however, and the overall amount of trash they find along the river has decreased over the years, Rekman said.
neagland@theprovince.com
twitter.com/nickeagland
© Copyright (c) The Province
There is a good picture of it in the Province.
A Chilliwack fisherman thought the steelhead he hooked last week on the Vedder River would make a fine supper before he cut it open to find its body stuffed with garbage.
Jordan Butt, 32, said he felt “disgusted” by what he found Feb. 13: Shards of blue, orange, black and white plastic, some the size of a loonie, perforating the fish’s stomach and shredding its anus.
“It looked like it had been in there for a long time,” said Butt, who suspects the fish ingested the plastic in the ocean before returning to fresh water to spawn.
“I caught a fish with a cigarette butt in it once, but that’s it. I used to work in a tackle shop but I’ve just never heard of anything like this.”
Butt, who usually releases his catches, has fished the Vedder River since he was a teenager and fished for steelhead a few times each week since the season began in late December.
He said the plastic-filled steelhead put up a good fight and seemed perfectly healthy, but now he’s concerned how much plastic is polluting the Pacific Ocean and wonders if other fish will meet the same fate.
“I just have a bad feeling about it,” Butt said. “It’s a real thing, it does exist and it might be affecting us now.”
Butt thinks his catch may be an anomaly but hopes other B.C. anglers who discover foreign objects in their catches document and report what they find.
Dr. Peter Ross, director of the ocean pollution research program at the Vancouver Aquarium, said that while Butt’s discovery is a lone case, it “raises the question of a potentially significant conservation threat,” the likes of which he hasn’t seen in fish before.
“Its very troubling for a couple of reasons,” said Ross, who also suspects the steelhead ingested the plastic in the ocean.
“Number 1, there’s many pieces of plastic in this animal and number 2, they look to be large enough to cause significant problems.”
During recent research into micro-plastics, his team found that smaller plastic particles were found in the ocean at a much higher concentration near land than offshore.
He said that much of the plastic waste floating near Vancouver and in the Straight of Georgia seems to be domestic pollution rather than tsunami debris from Japan.
The aquarium is in the process of acquiring equipment to analyze the makeup of plastics found in the ocean and will conduct research over the next year to distinguish between different types of plastic in the ocean and the relative contribution of different sources of plastic in B.C.
Dave Barnes, who worked for Fisheries and Oceans Canada for 37 years and caught his first steelhead in the Vedder River in 1960, said he considers the top end of the river “almost pristine” and also thinks the plastic came from the Pacific.
He has found lures in fish stomachs in the past but nothing quite like Butt’s discovery.“Rocks are quite common, small pebbles, but no, I’ve never seen plastic like that,” Barnes said.
Nikki Rekman of the Chilliwack Vedder River Cleanup Society said volunteers have cleaned up more than 90 tonnes of garbage along the river since 2002.
During biannual cleanups, hundreds of volunteers pick up waste such as furniture, fast food packaging, household trash, electronics and shotgun shell casings.
Almost all of the trash is picked up along the river’s banks, however, and the overall amount of trash they find along the river has decreased over the years, Rekman said.
neagland@theprovince.com
twitter.com/nickeagland
© Copyright (c) The Province