Published: July 20, 2008 12:14 am            

Fish and boat commission keeping tabs on VHS

As sister agencies, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and state game agency share a number of things.

Each is periodically held hostage by the Legislature to win license-fee increases to keep pace with inflation. Each has encountered controversy while trying to manage resources according to science rather than public demand.

And, each is faced with the scary specter of a potentially devastating disease spreading just outside Pennsylvania’s borders.

In the case of the game commission, that affliction is chronic wasting disease (CWD), which has infected deer populations in a number of other states, including neighboring New York and West Virginia, but has never been found within Pennsylvania. Most of the state’s hunters have heard of the threat, because it has received considerable press and media coverage.

The fish commission’s threat is viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), characterized by bloody lesions on affected fish. It’s received a lot less coverage than CWD, and far fewer outdoorsmen know about it as a consequence.

The fish commission has been keeping a watchful eye on VHS for a number of years, adding regulations as it deem necessary to bolster protections aimed at keeping the affliction at bay.

The latest report was a briefing on the disease at last week’s commission meeting, which resulted in additional restrictions on the movement of fish and their parts into or across the state.

“I think the major threat that we’re worried about is that it could get into our hatchery system,” newly elected fish commission President Len Lichvar said. “And, if it gets out and into that, we’ll end up having to shut down various components of the hatcheries, and that’s where our real serious concern is. That could pose a tremendous problem in our stocked-trout program. And, of course, that would be very difficult for us to overcome, and also difficult for the anglers to swallow, just like the potential problem of the decimation of the deer herd by chronic wasting disease. They pose similar threats.”

Like CWD, there is no evidence that humans can contract VHS, but it is usually fatal in fish. It has been responsible for widespread fish kills in the Great Lakes region.

A presentation to the fish commissioners by Andy Shiels, chief of the agency’s fish production services in State College, said the disease is spread through the water and can survive in infected fish through refrigeration and freezing. Shiels said VHS is believed to have originated in Europe. He said the first known case was 2003 musky mortality in Lake St. Clair, one of the Great Lakes chain, but the disease wasn’t identified until 2005, when it began killing freshwater drum in Lake Ontario.

By 2006, VHS was responsible for large kills of various species in Lake St. Clair, western Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River. It has now been reported in every one of the Great Lakes except Superior, and 31 species of fish are known to be susceptible.

The threat has caused federal and state agencies to put strict limitations on the movement of fish across state borders.

Because it is found in a portion of Lake Erie, the fish commission has likewise passed regulations aimed at preventing VHS from moving out of the Erie watershed. Just as the game commission samples wild deer for CWD, the fish commission plans to begin sampling wild fish in watersheds surrounding the Erie drainage next spring under a grant from the federal Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

“Obviously, it could get into rivers and streams and impact those,” Lichvar said. “But, if it would get into our hatcheries, that would be the devastating component that we would have to try to overcome, and that could be not only extremely expensive, but extremely consternating to us and the anglers.”

Information can be found at www.aphis.usda.gov/healthyfish.

        

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