A bacterium that kills birds and fish, called Type E Botulism, is feared to be spreading in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… four dead gulls were found on the shores of Lake Ontario:
Transcript
A bacterium that kills birds and fish, called Type E Botulism, is feared to be spreading in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports four dead gulls were found on the shores of Lake Ontario.
The gulls tested positive for Type E Botulism, a disease that paralyzes fish and the birds that eat them. After isolated outbreaks in Lakes Michigan and Huron in the 60s, 70s and 80s, infected birds were found on the Pennsylvania shores of Lake Erie in 1998. Since then, thousands of loons, mergansers, and gulls on the Lake have died. Peter Constantakes of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation is keeping his fingers crossed that the discovery in Lake Ontario is an isolated incident.
“In the past few weeks there have been no more dead birds found. We are cautiously optimistic that there is no problem in Lake Ontario. Possibly these birds migrated from somewhere else.”
But researcher Eric Obert of Pennsylvania Sea Grant says that’s unlikely because birds die quickly once they’re infected. Obert hypothesizes environmental conditions like low water levels or the presence of certain invasive species make the water ripe for the bacteria to grow. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.