Lead Ammo!

[Sea Save Foundation]

Lead Ammo, which has been linked to poisoning fish, birds and animals has been reintroduced to National Parks and Refuges. Interior Secretary reverses previous ban.

 

[CuzzA]

It's kind of hypocritical for us to condemn them when we drop hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of lead every year in the oceans, rivers and lakes as divers. We're probably more of a detriment to the environment. Just sayin.

 

[CryHavoc]

But the lead we drop in the ocean is not eaten by fish, unlike lead shot that is eaten by birds of prey who feed on animals shot and not recovered by hunters.

 

[CuzzA]

But the lead we drop in the ocean is not eaten by fish, unlike lead shot that is eaten by birds of prey who feed on animals shot and not recovered by hunters.

It still eventually finds its way up the food chain. A bag of lead shot likely kills any coral immediately next to it as it leaches the toxic metal. Eventually it breaks open and spreads. Benthic copepods, amphipods and other small crustaceans uptake the lead and as they are consumed by other animals up the food chain the lead continues to spread. I'm sure in many cases the lead itself is directly consumed as evident of fishing sinkers found in fish and birds.

I'm not suggesting I agree with the decision, especially when there are better alternatives, I'm just saying we're a little hypocritical to point out hunters use of lead while we too drop thousands of pounds of it in our waters. Lead is used by divers, anglers and hunters. Scuba divers are often viewed as stewards of the environment while well dived reefs are kicked to crap and polluted by these same divers. In other words, pot meet kettle.

 

[Kharon]

There is a HUGE difference between banning lead shot for waterfoul where the concentration in specific areas, density, and small size of the lead is such that it is very likely that dabbling (eating muck off the bottom) ducks and geese will injest large quantities of lead and the kneejerk banning of lead fishing weights and lead bullets which are large and spread over extremely wide areas.

 

[redacted]

Eliminating lead shot from waterfowl hunting makes sense. But many other restrictions are simply efforts by anti-hunting and anti-gun groups with little scientific basis. It is more to restrict guns that to protect the environment.

 

[Rred]

Seen any objective studies where lead was actually found to leach from lead shot (in seawater) and actually affect corals? Not just "it should" but has it been observed and proven?

Bigger problem to corals is coral bleaching, which is a very misleading misnomer for "algal ejection", where stressed corals suicidally eject the algae which is providing them with 90% of their nutrients. Why an organism with 500 million years of evolution should respond to stress by cutting off its primary food source, could be the question that saves the reefs. Or, allows them to go extinct as their predecessors did.

 

[CuzzA]

Seen any objective studies where lead was actually found to leach from lead shot (in seawater) and actually affect corals? Not just "it should" but has it been observed and proven?

Bigger problem to corals is coral bleaching, which is a very misleading misnomer for "algal ejection", where stressed corals suicidally eject the algae which is providing them with 90% of their nutrients. Why an organism with 500 million years of evolution should respond to stress by cutting off its primary food source, could be the question that saves the reefs. Or, allows them to go extinct as their predecessors did.

Maybe I'm being too critical here, but nevertheless...

Having actually grown and propagated coral and understand them more than your average person, I feel comfortable stating if you drop lead on or next to a coral colony it will eventually kill it or retard its growth. Are there studies that have been done on the effects of divers dropping lead on reefs? I don't know. Probably not, but if you do the research it's not a difficult conclusion to come to. Even if there were no studies, that doesn't make it not true. The fact of the matter is we use lead as ballast. Divers drop lead all of the time, often on the same reefs that are constantly dived. And lead kills coral. In areas with heavy human traffic and activity heavy metal levels are too high and scattering lead over the reefs certainly isn't good. I'm not suggesting divers are directly to blame for these high levels, but year after year lead just keeps accumulating on the reefs.

Development of a sublethal test to determine the effects of copper and lead on scleractinian coral larvae. - PubMed - NCBI

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?...ved=0ahUKEwinpe70wcXSAhUCQyYKHVZqD_AQgQMIGjAA

Coral bleaching is too broad of a topic. Nevertheless, exposure to even slightly elevated levels of lead and other heavy metals will lead to zooxanthellae (a dinoflagellate) living within the coral to be expelled, just like many other pollutants. I've also seen tissue necrosis from very small levels of exposure to metals. Corals are quite resilient in clean water. I've watched them manage prolonged extreme ph and temperature changes. Pollution on the other hand is not something they seem to handle well.

To your point about thousands of years of evolution, we know the answers. The chemistry of the ocean has been very stable and even when changes occur they happen very slowly, pollution is screwing up that chemistry, quickly.

 

[Rred]

"Divers drop lead all of the time,"
Really?
See, this is why I'm looking for objective studies not just hearsay. In my limited experience, I have never met or known a diver who dropped ANY lead, ever. Met a few who should have ditched their weight belts but the answer is always "That's expensive!" Never met any who dribbled out lead shot, but I'm old school, haven't bought any lead shot (much less worn holes in the bags) yet.
I'm not saying it isn't so--but who here has dropped lead? Show of hands?
As opposed to plenty of divers who pick up lead fishing weights.

"To your point about thousands of years of evolution, we know the answers."
Then please share those answers. What caused the first three great marine extinctions? And why now, after literally a HALF BILLION years in the latest round of oceans, would an organism that has evolved for a half billion years (that's the current kinds of hard coral) be following a behavior model that has extremely counterproductive effects? Algal expulsion is essentially suicide, and the concept of Darwinian evolution tells us that by now, those corals should be long gone from the planet--unless there's some greater purpose and benefit to the expulsion. Which no one seems to have any thoughts on.

Not that I disbelieve there's a problem, I'm just used to looking at the longer record and the bigger picture. The ocean and the shorelines especially are a dynamic process, the whole concept of freezing things eternally goes totally against the way they are made to work. So even when change seems "bad"...sometimes that's the way it is supposed to be. (Death of the dinosaurs? Bad, very bad for them. But without that extinction, we mammals wouldn't be here.)

 

[CuzzA]

Google is your friend...

This anecdote took me just a few seconds to find.

Divers Scour Blacktip Island Reefs To Save Lead Weights