Tag: farrell

Virus Killing Great Lakes Giants

  • 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)

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:


“Everything from the goby to the , y’know, and weed species and all
sorts of stuff, spiny water fleas, you name it, all sorts of stuff that are not native to this
waterway that we have to deal with, and it changes the whole ecology.”


A new invasive species is found every six to nine months. Scientists can
barely keep up in understanding the impact on the native environment.




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.

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Migrant Workers: Reaping Education

  • The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. (Photo by Gary Harwood )

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are dictated by the growing season:

Transcript

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often
uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are
dictated by the growing season:


In this farm town another house or trailer empties nearly every night. The growing season
is over and migrant workers are leaving, headed to Florida, Texas, Mexico, or someplace
else. That means their children will be pulled out of school. Cyndee Farrell is principal
of the elementary school:


“They’ll just not show up. Sometimes we get word, ‘Oh, we’re leaving tomorrow.’ Other
times, if the weather changes over the weekend or whatever happens and they just decide,
oh, we’re going to leave, they pack up and go. They know they can count on us being here when
they return, and we make it work.”


The migrant children leave as most students are just settling in to the semester.


For some migrants, it’s the only schooling they’ll get until they return to Ohio in April or
May, just a few weeks before the end of the school year.


Lisa Hull teaches reading to 4th and 5th graders. She says the migrants add a whole new
culture to this rural school. They laugh a lot and almost always seem happy.


But she says they don’t treat the classroom like the American kids:


“They don’t value education as well as i would say a normal, typical American would.
They have a different lifestyle. They’re easy going. We’re into all the possessions and
stuff, whereas they don’t really care if they have anything.”


The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. The families are close and
they stay close. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. One
person’s birthday is usually reason enough for an entire migrant neighborhood to
celebrate.


(Sound of knocking on door)


“Where is everybody?”


It’s Friday night and neighbor Pat Moore drops in on the Soto Family. They’ve just come
in from weeding lettuce in the fields. They’ve been migrating to rural Ohio from outside
Mexico City for more than a decade. The three ‘boys’ are all grown now and have
become U.S. citizens. They all graduated from Mexican high schools. 21 year-old
Alberto Soto also wanted a diploma from an American high school, so he stayed in this
town of Hartville on his own one winter:


“That year, I saw the snow for my first time. Here, it was too cold.”


The whole family is gathered in the living room: all three brothers, two younger sisters.
The mother and father don’t speak English, but they sit and listen, as Alberto Soto
explains why he stayed in Ohio that year:


“To finish my high school, I was in 12th grade. So I think that was important for me.
To get my diploma so I can get a better job, so they can pay me more. An easy job. Not
too hard like in the fields.”


Soto says he cried when his family left. He was lonely. But even after staying that
winter, he still hadn’t learned enough to graduate. He quit school and he’s been working
in the fields with his family since then. His 19 year-old brother Marco Soto has also
become an expert at weeding lettuce. Marco says it’s hard, boring work and he wants to
do something else:


“I think everything is going to be the same every year. And you are not going to learn something to do something because here, is almost the same. Like what you do everyday is going to be the same, like if you want to stay here for the rest of your life, it’s gonna be the same thing and you are not going to learn anything.”


Educators say most migrants need more schooling to improve their lives, but foreign-
born Hispanic students have the highest dropout rate in the U.S. The migrant
neighborhoods in the Hartville area are looking dark these days, but they’ll spring back to
life when the growing season begins again. The public school teachers say they’ll do
their best to keep working with the students who return.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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New Fish Virus Becoming Long-Term Threat?

Biologists are concerned a new fish virus may become an ongoing threat in the Great Lakes. The virus caused a fish die-off in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River last month. The GLRC’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Biologists are concerned a new fish virus may become an ongoing threat in the Great Lakes.
The virus caused a fish die-off in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River last month.
The GLRC’s David Sommerstein reports:


Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia is common in saltwater fish in the Pacific Northwest,
but somehow the virus hopped into the freshwater fish of Lake St. Clair and Lake Ontario
last year. Then, last month, the virus killed hundreds of fish in the St. Lawrence River.
Scientists are trying to determine if the virus is a long-term threat to the Great Lakes
fishery:


“You know, that’s kind of the million dollar question.”


John Farrell directs the Thousand Islands Biological Station. He says many
fish species may become infected with the virus but not show symptoms:


“They may serve as a reservior for the virus. There’s a potential
that the virus could cycle over time, but may be with us for a long time to come.”


Conservation officials are most worried about muskies, trout and salmon – native
fish that anglers love to catch.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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