Anglers need to do their part to try to stop VHS

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06/02/07 Bob Gwizdz

A number of months ago, after Department of Natural Resources deputy director Mindy Koch had updated the Natural Resources Commission on attempts to stop the spread of emerald ash borers (the exotic insects that are laying waste to the state's ash trees), I cornered Koch outside the meeting room and posed a simple question: Just what makes you think you can stop it?

Koch just shrugged. "We still have to try," she said.

That's the situation state fisheries officials find themselves in now with Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS), except the fisheries poobahs are a little more up front: They said they know they can't stop it, they're just hoping to slow it down.

But only a few days after the fish division provided the NRC with a draft plan to try slowing VHS, it was found in an inland lake in Clare County. Just like forestry officials, however, the fisheries staff is still going to try.

The fatal fish disease, which first showed up on the public's radar screen last spring with a significant muskellunge mortality in the Lake St. Clair/Detroit River waterway, may be far worse than emerald ash borers as it not only infects a plethora of species, but scientists don't know exactly the virus works.

For instance: At Budd Lake in Clare County, the predominant fish killed were crappie (though there were some incidental mortalities among other species as well). As Tammy Newcomb, the DNR's Lake Huron Basin coordinator explains it, "Budd Lake had a better bluegill population than it did crappie, and bluegills are also susceptible. We surveyed the lake immediately and were able to find good numbers of bluegills, but had a hard time finding any crappie."

Similarly, fisheries officials are unable to explain how VHS found its way into Budd Lake.

"It could have been a bait minnow, possible bird transmission, and our own stock (Budd Lake has been stocked in recent years with Tittabawassee River-strain walleye) is always a potential source, though we don't think it is. It could have been a boat. We just don't know."

Nor do they know what it means down the road.

"We just don't understand the pathology of the disease," Newcomb said. "Budd Lake had a fish kill this year. Is it going to have fish kills every year now or is it going to run its course?"

Already found in a Wisconsin lake in the Lake Michigan basin (meaning Lake Michigan is likely contaminated) and running rampant in the Finger Lakes region of New York, VHS is on the move and likely to soon be everywhere. But, that doesn't mean we can just accept it.

It's up to the anglers now to do whatever is in their power to prevent the spread of VHS.

The DNR is asking anglers not to move fish around, including bait minnows, from one lake to another. It is asking anglers to empty their bilges when they leave a lake and to disinfect their livewells (a half of cup of bleach diluted in five gallons of water will do the trick) after a fishing trip.

The fisheries rule on bait has been rewritten twice already and will likely be updated as more infected water bodies are identified. The DNR has produced a public service announcement to help educate anglers about VHS — but unless everyone signs on to the program, the disease is only going to spread.

Although Michigan's fisheries have weathered a number of diseases in recent years (bacterial kidney disease, largemouth bass virus, etc.), VHS is potentially worse. And though fisheries official guarantee "we're doing our best," it's up to every angler in Michigan to look in the mirror and ask themselves:

Am I going to be part of the problem or am I going to be part of the solution?