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Updated:2006-12-12 20:25:57

Fish Mysteriously Die Along Virginia River
By SUE LINDSEY
AP

ROANOKE, Va. (Dec. 12) - Scientists baffled by massive springtime fish kills on the Shenandoah River over several years now have additional confusing information: several hundred dead fish in December.

An environmentalist counted at least 300 dead northern hogsuckers on a 10-mile stretch of the main branch of the Shenandoah in Clarke and Warren counties last week, said Don Kain, a state Department of Environmental Quality biologist. An accurate count was impossible because many had sunk the bottom, DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden said.

About a dozen dead fish have been found this week, but they were of different species and in different parts of the river. Most of them were sunfish except for one smallmouth bass, Kain said. Half were found on the North Fork of the Shenandoah and half on the South Fork.

"That's been the toughest thing about this fish kill," Kain said. "There really aren't any concerted patterns."

None of the fish killed recently bore the cigar-burnlike lesions that afflicted fish in previous kills.

Other kills on the river prized by anglers have been in the spring, but the species have varied. Last spring, northern hogsuckers died on the mainstem Shenandoah in Clarke County, and a number of smallmouth bass and sunfish bearing lesions died on the North Fork.

Last year, 80 percent of the smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish in the South Fork developed lesions and died. The kill was similar to one in 2004 on the North Fork of the Shenandoah.

Scientists have been unable to determine the cause of the fish kills, and the state's Shenandoah River Fish Kill Task Force that was formed to investigate will look into the recent kills.

Kain, task force co-chairman, said he'll be out on the river Wednesday looking for fish samples that scientists can study. A fish still must be alive and in distress or freshly dead in order to be useful to scientists, and the fish found over the past two weeks had been dead for a longer period.

Fish that died in previous kills showed signs of stress, and some males had female characteristics, a condition called "intersex."

Development caused the Shenandoah River to make American Rivers' 10 most endangered waterways this year for the first time.


Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.