Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
Transcript
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
It’s called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. Humans can’t catch it, but it
causes internal bleeding in fish.
The virus is hurting the region’s multi-billion-dollar sport fishing industry.
Now, researchers are finding that adding iodine – a common practice in fish
hatcheries – could prevent the virus from spreading.
Steve LePan is a biologist for the state of New York. He says a study at
Cornell University found Walleye eggs treated with an iodine solution were
not infected with VHS.
“We can’t say for sure that it’s exclusively the iodine that kills it. There may
be other things we do to the eggs that also affect the virus, as well.”
Those ‘other’ treatments include bathing Walleye eggs in Tannic Acid for a
few minutes before incubation.
LePan says there’s still a lot to learn about VHS, but he’s cautiously
optimistic that hatcheries can breed fish uninfected by the disease.
Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Despite efforts to stop it, there’s a new
indication a nasty fish virus is spreading. Christina
Shockley has the latest:
Transcript
Despite efforts to stop it, there’s a new
indication a nasty fish virus is spreading. Christina
Shockley has the latest:
The name even sounds scary: viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It causes fish to bleed to
death.
VHS has been in the Great Lakes for at least three years. Officials have been trying
to confine it to the Great Lakes basin, but now it’s spread into central Ohio.
Elmer Heyob is with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
He says the worst-case scenario is that VHS could get into a hatchery that stocks fish
for lakes and streams, and that cloud hurt the region’s economy.
“First the hatcheries, then the fishery, then the people that support the fishery, the
boating industry, it just goes on and on.”
Heyob says to stop VHS from spreading, you shouldn’t move fish from one lake to
another, and you should clean boating and fishing equipment before you move to a
different lake.
Researchers believe eventually fish build up immunity to the disease.
VHS does not pose a threat to people.
For The Environment Report, I’m Christina Shockley.
Fishing guide Rich Clarke of Clayton, NY, is famous for muskie hunts.
He's worried so many adult muskies are falling victim to VHS. (Photo courtesy of Rich Clarke)
Roger Klindt of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, oversees seining, sampling bays in the St. Lawrence River for muskie young and other fish. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Klindt and John Farrell of SUNY ESF search for muskie young amongst loads of round gobies in a bay of the St. Lawrence River. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Fall is when avid anglers flock to the Great Lakes for one of the most
challenging freshwater catches: the muskellunge, or muskie. Some call it
“the fish of 10,000 casts.” This year’s muskie season is clouded by bad news
of a new fish disease and invasive species crowding muskie habitat. David
Sommerstein reports scientists are watching this top-of-the-food-chain
species carefully:
Transcript
Fall is when avid anglers flock to the Great Lakes for one of the most
challenging freshwater catches: the muskellunge, or muskie. Some call it
“the fish of 10,000 casts.” This year’s muskie season is clouded by bad news
of a new fish disease and invasive species crowding muskie habitat. David
Sommerstein reports scientists are watching this top-of-the-food-chain
species carefully:
It’s a cool afternoon as fishing guide Rich Clarke fillets the day’s catch:
“Went out, caught some northerns, a few bass, some jack perch. Had a
pretty good morning.”
Clarke’s specialty is hunting for muskies, 60 pound fish with a lot of fight:
“I mean, the rod screams, they yank, yank, and yank. It doesn’t come all that
often, but when it comes, it’s one of the most exciting things you’ll see when
you fish in fresh water.”
Clarke worries that magical hit might become even more rare. Since 2005,
several hundred of those prized muskies were found belly-up dead, victims
of viral hemorrhagic septicimia, or VHS.
(Sound of hose)
Clarke washes down his fillet table. He mutters VHS is just another non-
native organism threatening the muskie. There are already more than 180
invasive species in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system:
In a nearby bay of the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State,
Roger Klindt, John Farrell, and a crew drag a huge net through the water:
“We’ve got two people pulling it slowly through the vegetation just trying
to basically corral fish.”
This is called seining, getting a sample of all the fish that live here. Klindt
and Farrell have been doing this in the same marshy shallows for more than
20 years. And Farrell says what they’ve found this year is disturbing:
“Muskellunge numbers in the index are at their lowest levels on record since
we’ve been collecting data.”
Down from almost 50 in the spring spawning run of 2003 to just 4 this year.
Farrell’s a researcher with the State University of New York Environmental
Science and Forestry. He says this could be the result of VHS killing so
many adult muskies in their reproductive prime.
Yet another invasive species is also troubling, the round goby. It’s an ugly
little fish from Eastern Europe that breeds like crazy. Farrell and Klindt
count minnows flipping and fluttering in the seining net:
“15 black gins, 8 blunt nose, 5 spot tail.”
“I didn’t actually count things, I was just picking gobies.”
Farrell says they’ve found more round gobies in these marshes than ever
before:
“Which is a bit of a surprise to us.”
Now the muskie young have to compete with round gobies for food:
“How these species are going to respond to the presence of gobies is
unknown at this time, but they have high predation rates, they’re very
prolific, becoming extremely abundant, so the food web in this system is
shifting.”
This is what frustrates people who study invasive species. Once researchers
train their focus on one, like the fish disease VHS, another emerges to
confound the equation. Roger Klindt is with New York’s Department of
Environmental Conservation:
“Change happens, y’know, nothing stays the same forever. But when we
have invasive species and exotic species come in, the change is often so
rapid that native species can’t adapt to it.”
That talk makes anglers nervous. Peter Emerson’s been fishing around here
for years. In fact, he participated in a catch and release program that brought
muskie populations back to health in the 1980s:
“There was a real bonanza, til this virus showed up. I’m hopeful they don’t
go extinct.”
Biologists expect adult muskies that survived VHS will develop resistance to
the disease. But they fear the next generation won’t inherit the immunity,
causing more die-offs of one of America’s most prized freshwater fish.
For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.
The external bleeding on this freshwater drum fish is a result of VHS. The disease is spreading beyond the eastern Great Lakes region. (Photo by John Lumsden, University of Guelph)
A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A virus that’s been killing fish in the Great Lakes is spreading to
other waterways in the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Viral hemorrhagic septicemia has been limited to the eastern Great
Lakes region, but now it’s gotten into a forty-mile long lake in
Wisconsin. Lake Winnebago draws anglers from a wide area.
Mike Schmal is a local tourism official. He says the fish-killing
virus could be very disruptive.
“There’s numerous bait shops and numerous businesses that depend on the
lake and this is our summer leisure season… when the boating season
begins and when sportfishing begins.”
Scientists say it appears to be impossible to get the virus out of
infected waters, so natural resource officials are trying to stop VHS
from being spread to more lakes and rivers in other states.
It’s not clear how VHS got into the US, though contaminated
ballast water from international ships is one possibility.
A disease that’s killing fish in the Great Lakes region is spreading;
and, as Richie Duchon reports, it’s infecting more and more species:
Transcript
A disease that’s killing fish in the Great Lakes region is spreading;
and, as Richie Duchon reports, it’s infecting more and more species:
The disease is called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia, or VHS. It weakens
fish immune systems, and they often die of organ failure and internal
bleeding.
Gary Whelan is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He
says the disease is here to stay:
“We cannot stop the disease. That’s very unlikely. It will continue
to spread. But we certainly can try to keep it out of sensitive fish
populations and out of inland lakes to our best that we can.”
Whelan says that includes not moving fish or water from lake to lake.
Just last month, VHS was confirmed in two popular sport fish in Lake
Huron.
Whelan says the virus could make it to Lakes Michigan and Superior this
year.
Commercial fishers and biologists are concerned
about the impact a viral disease will have on the Great Lakes fishery.
There have been some large fish kills. Live fish commerce has been
restricted to help prevent the spread of the disease.
A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes.
Biologists and fishery officials are working to prevent further spread of
the disease, but there’s a conflict between government agencies. Lester
Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses that deal in live fish:
Transcript
A disease is spreading, causing large fish kills in the Great Lakes. Biologists and
fishery
officials are working to prevent further spread of the disease, but there’s a conflict
between government agencies. Lester Graham reports there’s also a cost to businesses
that deal in live fish:
The disease that’s killing fish is called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia — or VHS. Jim
Diana is a fish biologist at the University of Michigan who’s been looking into what
it
does to fish…
“So, it’s a virus that the fish pick up and the virus causes really kind of a
general systemic
deterioration. Most notable, sometimes they’ll develop sores or lesions on the
outside of
the body, but they often will die without really external evidence at all.”
Basically, the fish die from internal bleeding. For several years there have been
die-offs
in the St. Lawrence River, which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. But
researchers weren’t able to confirm the cause was VHS. Then this past summer in Lake
Saint Clair — the lake near Detroit that lies between Lake Huron and Lake Erie —
Jim
Diana says fish die-offs were confirmed to be caused by VHS.
“And since then, they’ve found it in quite a few other species, something like 20
other
species, so it’s quite widespread.”
It’s not clear how the virus got here. But… it originated in Europe. Researchers
guess
that infected fish hitchhiked in the ballast tanks of a ship… or a live fish shipment
escaped into the St. Lawrence River and it’s spread from there by ship.
Biologists say the spread of VHS is not good. It’s not expected to wipe out fish in
the
Great Lakes. But it is causing some real concern.
“We’re not talking about a couple of fish here, we’re talking about large fish
kills. And
VHS is present in those and implicated in the deaths of those fish.”
Marc Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Gaden says because stocking
fish is a big industry… there’s a lot of fish shipped between the U.S. and Canada and
between one state and another.
“So, in the Great Lakes basin there is a movement of fish, fish eggs and other fishery
related things like water that’s used in the fish stocking trucks, things like that.
There’s
aquaculture that occurs, fish farms in the Great Lakes basin. The Departments of
Natural Resources harvest fish eggs to use in their stocking programs and the fish
themselves are stocked. So, there’s movement of fish and fish eggs throughout the
Great
Lakes basin just as a normal part of fisheries management and commerce that occurs.”
So the chance that the virus can be spread by all those fish moving around is
significant.
The federal government thought it was such a risk that it banned all fish shipments.
The
states quickly appealed that. They said it was overkill. They persuaded the feds
that they
were doing enough testing that the chances that VHS would be spread were slim.
So, the feds backed off a bit. But restrictions are still causing some problems. For
example… live fish that are not going to be put back into the lakes… live fish that
are
headed for dinner plates at restaurants still have to be tested. And VHS poses no
risk to
human health.
Ted Batterson is the director of the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center at
Michigan State University. He says he knows one fish farmer whose business is
supplying rainbow trout to restaurants.
“Well, now to be able to do that, he has to have the certification that these are
VHS-free.
It takes him currently, with the laboratory he’s been sending these to, up to 90
days to
get the certification that these are disease free. Well, that is not timely because
these
people who want fish at the other end need them in essence like yesterday, not 90 days
down the road.”
Another business hit by the restrictions on moving live fish is the bait industry.
If the
bait industry has to test –for example—one out of every 50 fish… and the test costs
about
50-dollars… no one will be able to afford to sell bait fish.
The states and the feds are still trying to figure out how to prevent the spread of
VHS…
without hurting the businesses that rely on live fish shipments any more than
necessary.
But… some businesses are already feeling the squeeze.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
An emerging fish disease known as viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, has prompted a proposed ban on the use of ballast water in the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports the proposed ban is leading to predictions of economic disruption:
Transcript
An emerging fish disease known as viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, has prompted a proposed ban on the use of ballast water in the Great Lakes. The proposed ban is leading to predictions of economic disruption. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The US Government has put temporary limits on the shipments of live fish from the great lakes states. That’s because of a virus in some great lakes waters that is fatal to fish. The state of Michigan says a better way to prevent that virus from spreading is to ban freshwater ships from taking in ballast water from the lakes that are contaminated.
Jim Weakley is president of the Lake Carriers Association. He says ships couldn’t operate if they couldn’t take on ballast.
“You’re talking about shutting down the movement of iron ore, coal, limestone, cement, salt; all the products we move that keep the manufacturing basis of this area moving.”
Environmental groups support the proposed ban on ballast water intake, saying ballast transfers move around a lot of unwanted species.
Regulators are worried about a fish disease found in the lakes that could spread to other areas. Federal officials are trying to figure out the next step after banning certain shipments of fish in the Great Lakes Region. Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Regulators are worried about a fish disease found in the lakes that could spread to other areas. Federal officials are trying to figure out the next step after banning certain shipments of fish in the Great Lakes Region. Dustin Dwyer has more:
The disease is called viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It can cause fish to bleed internally and die.
The disease is harmless to humans, but federal regulators say it could lead to massive die-offs for up to 37 different species of fish, so they’ve stopped fisheries in the eight Great Lakes states, and two Canadian provinces from shipping those species over state lines. The ban only affects live fish.
Jim Rogers is a spokesman with the US Department of Agriculture. He says the ban is meant to stop the spread of the disease while officials figure out what to do next.
“Now eventually that federal ban is going to lift, and we are going to be allowing movement. But right now we just can’t do it with the threat of this disease hanging over us.”
The fishing industry in the Great Lakes has been valued at more than $4 billion a year.
Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
