Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Death Becomes Them

Last month there were reports of a massive fish kill in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, when thousands of invasive round gobies (Neogobius melanostomus) turned up dead. Now the culprit has been discovered, and it's bad news for all fish: turns out the deaths were caused by viral hemorrhagic septicemia. VHS can infect trout, salmon, pike and sea bass and is typically associated with a high mortality rate. Before this recent discovery, VHS was known only in Washington's Puget Sound and in Europe, and more recently in Ontario's Bay of Quinte and Michigan's Lake St. Clair.

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