VHSv - Drain your boat or get a ticket.

[Will Schultz]

BRIAN MULHERIN - DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
bmulherin@ludingtondailynews.com 843-1122, ext. 348

ROGERS CITY — Boaters who don’t drain their boats as they leave the water this summer may be ticketed, DNR Fish Production Specialist Gary Whelan said Friday at a meeting with the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association.

As part of an emergency order to slow or halt the spread of the fish disease viral hemorrhagic septicemia, boaters in Michigan are required to drain all water from their livewells, baitwells, on-board coolers and bilges when their boat leaves a body of water.

“Don’t move water over land,” Whelan said of the key to keeping the virus out of inland lakes.

While VHS is at its core a biological problem, keeping it out of inland lakes is a social challenge, Whelan said.

Conservation officers will patrol the state’s boat ramps this summer to make sure the regulations are followed. Creel census personnel are also expected to help spread the message about the dangers of moving water from lake to lake, he said.

He explained that anglers moving their boats from lake to lake in the same weekend should either dry their boats for four to six hours in sunlight or wash down their boats with a light bleach solution mixed at a ratio of a half cup to five gallons.

Only one inland lake in Michigan, Budd Lake north of Clare, has been shown to be infected with VHS. Whelan said that lake most likely contracted the disease that wiped out scores of crappies, bluegills and even muskies from infected live bait or from a “bait-bucket biologist” who moved gamefish to Budd Lake from a VHS-infected body of water.

Whelan said the DNR has stepped up monitoring of inland lakes this summer, following the general guideline of looking closest at the lakes that got zebra mussels first.

In late May, Wisconsin officials announced they had confirmed positive tests for VHS-infected fish from Lake Michigan. One of the fish was a smallmouth bass from Sturgeon Bay and another was a brown trout from farther south. At this time, Lake Michigan is still considered a VHS surveillance zone by Michigan officials, but Whelan said that can be expected to change in the not-too-distant future.

Once Lake Michigan is part of the VHS-infected waters, anglers won’t be able to transport bait from the Lower Peninsula or from the Lake Michigan watershed of the Upper Peninsula to waters in the Lake Superior watershed, which is still considered VHS-free.

Whelan said the virus most likely came to Lake Michigan via ballast water, since the strain in the Great Lakes closely matches one from the maritime region of Canada. There are concerns that Duluth, Minn., which has the second-highest ballast water exchange rate on the Great Lakes, will be the next place the virus shows up. If that happens, the virus will get into the Mississippi River system.

But the one silver lining to the virus spreading to lakes Michigan and Huron, Whelan said, is that it has brought the problems associated with ballast water into the headlines again. It might just be the event that finally triggers some real ballast water controls, he said.

“Of anything I’ve seen in my career to deal with ballast water, this is our best opportunity,” Whelan said. “We will never see an opportunity like this again.”