By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot
© April 19, 2008
The Virginian-Pilot
© April 19, 2008
The James River, so wide and deep in Hampton Roads, is skinny and shallow as it rolls past this hilly town in the Shenandoah Valley.
Bass boats buzz up and down the greenish current here, and anglers can be seen on most spring days casting a lazy line from shore.
On one of these sunny spring days recently, scientists set up a makeshift lab in a shady spot along the James, with tables and rubber gloves, razors and clipboards – even a blood analyzer and a mobile refrigerator to hold body parts and suspect tissues.
They were looking for sick fish, especially smallmouth bass, the most popular sport fish in the region, which have been dying in droves in recent years throughout the Shenandoah Valley.
The victims often are flecked with bloody lesions and sores. They tend to swim aimlessly, as if drunk, before succumbing and going still.
In 2005, an estimated 80 percent of all adult smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish died in this fashion over a four-month period in the nearby South Fork of the Shenandoah River.
More lesions and fish kills occurred the following spring in the North Fork of the Shenandoah, not far from national forests, historic sites and canoe passages.
Then last spring, the same types of mature fish started turning up dead in the upper James River, near Buchanan, and farther west in the Cowpasture River, which until then was considered one of the most pristine waterways in the state.
"Something is very wrong in here," said Donald Orth, a fisheries professor at Virginia Tech. On this day, he was taking notes and observing freshly collected fish samples at the makeshift lab.
"It's our job to help unravel all this," Orth added, "and try to stop it."
So far, though, scientists and fish experts have been stumped by the phenomenon, unable to pinpoint a culprit. It is perhaps the biggest environmental mystery in Virginia.
State officials have contacted colleagues across the nation, hoping to find answers from similar outbreaks elsewhere. But the conditions and quirks mirror nothing else, they say; Virginia, it seems, will be left to solve its own strange puzzle.
The fish kills, ongoing each spring since 2004, have stunned and worried residents of the Shenandoah. Tourists and anglers have stayed away, causing economic hardship.
The Shenandoah River was listed in 2006 as one of the 10 most endangered waterways in the country by the conservation group American Rivers, which blamed unchecked development and agriculture for the threat.
Concern and frustration are the two most common emotions among those who live in the region, said Mary Gessner, with the environmental group Friends of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.
"Every year it seems to be a little different," said Gessner, who resides just off the North Fork near the town of Woodstock.
Theories, of course, abound.
Experts initially suspected that a new virus or pathogen might have found a home in the Valley, but nothing has been detected yet.
Working with emergency funds approved by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the General Assembly, scientists continue to analyze river waters and sediments for toxic chemicals. They know that much of the Shenandoah and its North and South forks already are subject to human fish-consumption advisories due to high levels of mercury and PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls, which can cause cancer – in certain fish.
But the results of that sampling have been inconclusive, said Don Kain, who has overseen the work for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
"We see traces of a lot of things, but not at toxic concentrations," Kain said.
Because the region is the epicenter of Virginia's rich poultry and dairy industries, attention has focused on potential ammonia and arsenic runoff from farms and ranches. Again, results have been mixed, Kain said.
Global warming has been discussed as a contributor. Increased development and overworked sewage plants also have been eyed. And while these factors probably are adding to the problem, they alone are not the cause, experts believe.
Then there is the "intersex" issue.
The term refers to the sexual morphing of male fish, which start growing female eggs in their testes.
In the Shenandoah and upper Potomac river systems, where lesions and kills have most noticeably occurred, federal researchers discovered that nearly all of the males showed signs of intersex abnormalities.
Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Fish Health Lab, in West Virginia, said an influx of pharmaceuticals and hormones – especially estrogen – are the likely causes.
The estrogen seems to come from various sources, Blazer said, including birth-control pills flushed down toilets and discharged from sewage plants, which do not filter such hormones.
Estrogen also seems to wash naturally into the rivers from the hundreds of thousands of chickens, turkeys and cows being raised in the Shenandoah Valley for food, Blazer and other scientists have noted.
In an interview, Blazer said "a perfect storm of sorts" exists in the Valley that is likely affecting the fish.
Storm elements include multiple chemicals and hormones running into the rivers; high amounts of nutrients polluting the water from new development, roads and farms; increasing water temperatures leading to more growth of bacteria, fungus and parasites that irritate immune systems; and the natural shallowness and minimal flows in the mountainous rivers that leave little room for the fish to escape.
Blazer is writing a new research paper, to be published soon, that will examine data collected at various sites in the Valley for 199 different chemicals, medicines and hormones, including estrogen and synthetic estrogen.
Her multiple-factor theory is the prevailing one these days among scientists, state officials and conservationists. But it remains just that – a theory.
And even if proved correct, what policies and practices should be implemented to remedy so many problems?
"Man, this thing has consumed me since 2004," said Steve Reeser, a fisheries biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries who watches over the Shenandoah River.
"The most uncanny thing is, I can ramble on about this and that and everything we've looked at forever," Reeser said, "and I still don't know the answer."
On a recent day, Reeser was driving a flat-bottom boat on the upper James River, shocking the shallow waters while colleagues in front netted fish stunned by the small jolt of electricity.
The fish – smallmouth bass, suckers, sunfish, rock bass – were then shuttled back to the makeshift lab at Buchanan, where Virginia Tech specialists were waiting to dissect the fresh samples.
Kathy Alexander, an animal-disease specialist and veterinarian just back from studying cheetahs in Africa, led the biological slicing and dicing.
"Is there a sick rock bass over there?" she called out.
"Yes, just one," answered an aide looking inside a bucket.
"OK, well, I want to see the lesions and abrasions right away. Bring him here," Alexander said. "Oh, wait, have we bled him yet?"
No, another aide replied.
So a technician grabbed the feeble-looking bass, its scales sloughing off like putty, and sunk a needle into its back to draw a vial of blood.
Alexander then started her analysis – cutting open the bass, studying its liver, scraping away a slimy lesion, and searching for internal parasites.
"Ooo, do you see this?" she suddenly blurted. "He's got a big bubble in his eye. We need a sample of this."
During a break, Alexander peeled off her rubber gloves and sighed when asked her diagnosis.
"Unlikely it's just one thing," she said. "It's probably a combination of stresses. We just don't know what pushes them over the edge."
Alexander then talked about the bigger picture here.
"What this really signals is that we're seeing critical changes in these ecosystems, and the fish are showing us the consequences," she said. "It's a critically important project. And we can't afford to miss the lessons here."
Several counterintuitive oddities have especially stumped scientists.
For one, fragile young fish do not seem to be affected, only adults. Furthermore, the adults are not having trouble reproducing, despite their multiple stresses.
Reeser, the state fisheries biologist, noted that despite the significant kills in the Shenandoah system in recent years, plenty of fish are being born and the overall population seems to be fine.
"Go figure that one out," he said.
There are few exact numbers of dead fish associated with the kills, he said, mostly because they do not occur in huge, sudden bursts. Instead, they happen steadily and gradually, starting in March or April and lasting until June or July.
Then they stop.
Residents and tourists have started asking whether the conditions could harm people. State health officials say probably not.
They suggest a common-sense caution that people not swim in waters when a fish kill is happening, and avoid eating dead fish or those with lesions.
Bill Street, executive director of the James River Association, an environmental group, is watching events this spring closely.
Fish kills had not occurred in the James until last year, and when they did, reports showed effects from Buchanan downstream to Lynchburg.
"We thought we'd dodged a bullet, but then last year – wham! – it jumped into the James and we were, like, 'Oh my God, now what?'" Street said.
"We're braced for more kills this spring," he said, "and can only hope we figure out what in the world is going on."
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