Area bayou catches may not be safe to eat
Pollution from the Houston Ship Channel should cause anglers to think twice about meal plans, state health officials warn
Many anglers know if you catch a fish in one of Houston’s plentiful bayous, the right thing to do is to release it back into the water.
Still, curious minds wonder: Can you instead eat what you catch?
Technically, the answer is yes — it’s not illegal to fish and eat from Houston’s bayous.
State health officials wouldn’t recommend it, though, because eating fish from the region’s bayous could cause a variety of health problems.
“Some people heed the advice and others don’t,” said Kirk Wiles of the seafood and aquatic life branch of the Texas Department of State Health Services. “That’s just the nature of society.”
So what’s the risk?
Many bayous in the area, including Buffalo Bayou, are part of the Houston Ship Channel, where the state has found water containing potentially unsafe levels of pollutants.
In 2015, DSHS issued an advisory against eating fish and crabs from the Houston Ship Channel and Upper Galveston Bay after finding unacceptable levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly known as PCBs, as well as pesticides and other contaminants in the water.
Once used commercially as coolants in electrical equipment, PCBs can negatively impact a person’s immune system and vital organs, according to the Seafood and Aquatic Life Group of the state’s health services department.
The risk is even greater for expectant mothers. Eating large amounts of fish that contain PCBs can cause infants to have delayed physical development and learning difficulties.
That said, if someone has been eating the contaminated fish all their life, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re guaranteed to have adverse health effects.
“We try to present the information so that consumers can make an informed decision about whether they want to take the risk of eating the fish or feeding them to your family,” Wiles said.
To eat or not to eat
When deciding whether to take the risk of chowing down on a possibly contaminated fish, here are a couple of factors to consider:
First, think about where you caught the fish.
DSHS has an interactive Texas Fish Consumption Advisory Viewer (houstonchronicle.com/ fishadvisory) that anyone can review. Unfortunately, not all bodies of water have advisories and many waterways haven’t even been tested, Wiles said.
“It’s a common misconception that somebody goes out and checks every body of water and fish around Texas and that’s not the case,” he said.
DSHS doesn’t have a routine fish monitoring program and is only able to sample bodies of water when given external funding through grants. “So there’s a lot of areas even in Houston with bodies of water that have never been sampled,” Wiles said.
While pollutant levels can fall when an area is cleaned up, Wiles says “the Houston Ship Channel is an area that has a long history of contamination, and that contamination ultimately ends up in fish that don’t change much over time.”
Second, the size, age and type of fish matters and should factor into your decision.
Larger, older fish will generally contain higher levels of PCBs than smaller, younger fish. Fatty fish like carp, gar and catfish may also contain higher levels of PCBs than lean fish like largemouth bass, walleye and crappies.
Because of the potential health impacts, DSHS advises children and women of childbearing age entirely avoid eating fish and crabs from Houston’s bayous. For adult men and women past childbearing age, DSHS recommends only consuming eight ounces of fish a month, at most.
So if you absolutely must take a bite out of your latest catch from the bayou, do so sparingly.