Researchers stumped by recent fish kills
By Hailey Adkisson, contributing writer
Posted on April 6, 2006

Dozens of fish were found dead in the South Fork of the Shenandoah River throughout last March, and the problem has left researchers stumped.

Steve Reeser of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries said this is not the first time fish kills have occurred in the area.

Since 2004, kills have occurred every spring around this time . Reeser described some of the dead fish as having small lesions on their bodies. Both Reeser and JMU chemistry professor Daniel Downey also said the fish that surfaced were all adults.

Lesions were not the only things noticeably wrong with these fish. Some have been classified as intersex. An intersex fish, Reeser said, is a male fish that has immature eggs.
 
Reeser said stress is the culprit — while fish are stressed, they cannot fight off diseases. He compared this to human beings becoming sick.

“If a human being does not get enough rest, they become run down and more susceptible to the common cold,” Reeser said. 
To scientists pondering this recent fish kills, these deaths are not merely due to a fish with a runny nose.

“The fish kills are frustrating because it’s not easy to solve how they are dying,” Reeser said. “There is no pipe leaking pollutants into a stream that we can point a finger at and fix. There is no smoking gun.”

Downey did, however, say Harrisonburg residents and JMU students should not be concerned about the water as of now, Downey said there is no indication the water is the cause for the fish kills or whether it would affect people.

“While I wouldn’t make sushi out of them, any bacteria that was in a fish would be killed by proper cooking,” Downey said.

Downey said many people draw their livings from the river. “Any threat to the fishing industry would be incredibly harmful to the economy of many people.”

Still, researchers are exhausting every effort to solve the problem.