Hermaphroditic Fish, Heavy Gender Imbalance Found In CO Rivers

[hatrack]

"When Colorado biologist John Woodling and a team of researchers pulled fish from the South Platte River and Boulder Creek two years ago, they found deformities they'd never seen before. Some had both male and female sex tissue.

The fish, white suckers native to Colorado, were swimming in the waters downstream of the Denver area's largest sewage plants. And the team found something else: Females far outnumbered males in these wastewater soups. "This is the first thing that I've seen as a scientist that really scared me," said Woodling, 58, a retired fisheries biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife now working with the University of Colorado.

The discovery of these freak fish just below Denver and Boulder has sent chills through the ranks of the Environmental Protection Agency. When they learned of Woodling's initial find, officials speedily approved a $100,000 grant so his team could expand its investigation.

Federal officials want to know whether the abnormalities - the first of their kind discovered in Colorado and perhaps the nation - are a result of the chemical brew now flushed by state sewage treatment plants. So far, the team can say only that they have consistently found these changes in fish collected near these two wastewater pipes. After Denver, the towns of Brighton, Gilcrest, Platteville, the Morgan County Water Quality District and a host of small communities all the way to the Nebraska border pump their drinking water from shallow aquifers connected to the South Platte (see graphic). But it is not known whether the chemicals are present in their supplies."

EDIT

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2442899,00.html

[Inland]

1. Time to pass an amendment banning hermaphrodites and/or fish

[hatrack]

4. These hermaphroditic fish are a threat to American families

Their icthyologically permissive life-styles must be stamped out!

[Inland]

5. Adam and Eve, not Icky Icthyism!

[TwilightZone]

2. "Heavy Gender Imbalance"

Sounds like the Senate.

Or perhaps the Republican Party.

On a more serious note, my father lives in Colorado and has been involved in conservation and ecological causes for years. He said that stories like this get buried all of the time by big business (Coors, for example), so it's nice to see at least one getting some mainstream press.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Birth control.... pesticides.... link....

www.epa.gov/endocrine/gedri/

www.worldwildlife.org/toxics/progareas/ed/index.htm

http://www.worldandi.com/public/2001/October/ee.html

Sterility in the Florida panther has been linked to predation on animals exposed to pesticides with estrogenic activity.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1996/01/castleman.html
Down For the Count
In 1982, when we reported a decline in sperm counts, skeptics blamed jockey shorts. They were wrong.

[snowFLAKE]

6. HEYA, Look what I Caught in That River