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Sewage outflows and sexual disruption of fish in English Rivers

I was moaning to my "missus" at the weekend about the perceived decline in our sport and mentioned the various theories that we have, the hormonal one included. She has assured me that it's got "absolutely nothing to do with it" and of course I believe her.
I would just like to set the record straight on her behalf. It's not them, it's US!
 
That article is proper science that is! Try getting your head around page 8. It made my head hurt - a lot!

Conrad
 
conrad farlow said:
that article is proper science that is! Try getting your head around page 8. It made my head hurt - a lot!

Conrad
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Same as you Conrad i understood what they were getting at until page 8, i stopped reading it after that,.......... now i remember why i hated algebra and logs at school !!
 
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I do believe though if there is one overall chronic problem with our rivers it primarily has something to to with this, the abundance of big fish of all species ( obviously females ) and the lack of fry recruitment, in seemingly top quality water.

Ian.
 
And yet the Trent, which must receive far more sewage than most rivers is stuffed full of fish of all sizes.
 
Chris Turnbull said:
And yet the Trent, which must receive far more sewage than most rivers is stuffed full of fish of all sizes.
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Yeah but surely the amount of water that runs through the river would serve to dilute any toxins too a much greater a degree than say a smaller river with a slower pace such as the Great Ouse in Milton Keynes and Bedford etc.

Perhaps / maybe?
 
Colin Gordon said:
Yeah but surely the amount of water that runs through the river would serve to dilute any toxins too a much greater a degree than say a smaller river with a slower pace such as the Great Ouse in Milton Keynes and Bedford etc.

Perhaps / maybe?
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Yes Colin, I'd agree with that, though a huge heavily populated area drains into the Trent and its tributaries. I'm not going to guess the comparisons. What I will say is that I still think spawning habitat is a huge issue. While there's tons of it on the Trent, the Ouse (much like the Wensum) has been wrecked by dredgers, hence the fish population ended up in an upside down pyramid pattern, with few fry at it's base and an unusually large proportion of increasingly heavy fish at the top.... And once they die out or are dragged out by otters, the pyramid simply gets smaller. That's not to play the pollution issues down, but even in top quality water, if the habitat is knackered the population of fish will inevitably collapse.
 
Ray

As you [and others] may very well be aware I was heavily involved in 1975 in discussions with the then Thames Water Authority on the effects of Estrogen and highlighted the problem of both fish and possible ramifications with the human population in my later speeches in the early 80's. I turned down the invitation to the BBC2 debate on the subject as I lacked the same professional qualifications as the panel and feared a whitewash.
Funny how some 30 plus years later some people are beginning to take notice at last.
I think you know how I feel.

Take care

Mike
 
Simon Kitcher said:
Been keeping an eye on this in the press, and found a good link to some recent research on the problem. This has been touched on in some of the other threads, so a dedicated thread might be a good idea. Please check out the link below,

http://www.start-project.de/downloads/Anti_Androgens_in_Waste_Waters.pdf
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Not sure who this article is aimed at. It seems a load of gibberish with no summary of any note. I have read that oestrogen (from the pill) from sewage outlets can cause a sex change in male fish. Clearly, the more exposure, (concentration of the hormone), and age of the fish (build up over time) will both have an impact. I think that the change is reversible. Get the wife snipped.
 
Here is another of Susan Jobling's papers that is readily accessible: Widespread Sexual Disruption in Wild Fish. [apologies - I was on a computer at my university and could download the document without being signed in, or so I thought. pm me if you are interested in the document].

At a recent Tideway Tunnel meeting I asked the director of Thames Water why EDCs, which are known to cause intersex in fish populations, were not filtered from effluent input into the Thames. He replied that to do so was an extremely costly business using massive amounts of activated charcoal, yet TW were currently undertaking research to find other ways to strip the water of these chemicals.

Don't shoot the messenger!
 
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Cass

I knew you would bring sex into this discussion. Spending too much time on your computor. Now I know where my taxes are going !!

See you soon hopefully

Mike
 
You know, Mike, without that little 3 letter word the world would stop spinning ;)

I didn't realise that that document wasn't downloadable without being signed in to ACS Publications. If anyone wants to see it pm me.
 
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