Theyre Finally On To Whats Wrong With The Susquehanna Smallmouth Population

[jhoffman]

Over the weekend we were at the inlaws when the father in law said, saw this article thought you might be interested. He doesnt fish....

 

"Intersex fish found in the susquehanna river" in a small local paper to the area. It peaked my interest, it seems as though after years of trying to find out why the bass population is crashing they might be on it. 

 

The biologists opened several species of fish from the river and what did they find inside the fish?

 

EGGS in MALE smallmouth where there should be sperm. TERRIBLE news

 

I googled the same topic and it looks like its hitting the papers as far as the west coast.

 

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-intersex-fish-20140705-story.html

 

Thats probably the worst possible news that fishery could receive. I have to wonder if my local lakes are experiencing the same issues as the bass just arent there in areas that fill from running creeks and rivers.

 

Didnt scour the article above but they said they found it in the entire basin of multiple rivers. Heres the kicker, its ONLY really effecting the smallmouths, estrogen in the water!

[Dwight Hottle]

I saw that recently. I noticed the smallie in the picture had black spot markings like early pre spawn bass have after winter. That kinda stumped me unless it was just coincidental. They are saying its a result of farm fertilizer & runoff. There was a study done in Presque Isle bay that found similar findings from drugs being flushed into the sewer systems & filtering into the water causing sex changes in the fish population. Tough situation.

[EvanT123]

Wow that is really a bummer. Not only from a fishing perspective but from a ecosystem/food chain perspective. Hopefully there will be some resolution to the problem.

[ClackerBuzz]

guess we should have seen it coming.  scientists have know about the "human source from wastewater treatment plant effluent and other sewage discharge" problem for years.  i remember reading about male frogs having the problem 10 years ago.  they realized the problem was women have high estrogen in their urine from taking birth control.  everything goes thru sewage plants un-treated and right back into the water supply (and/or medicine going right thru septic tanks).  frogs are the canaries in the coal mine of water.  i remember the article said in the far far future all plants with have closed systems (although some countries are building them now) meaning they must be closed/self contained systems  ie no taking clean water in and dumping dirty water out. they must clean it themselves..and they will have to produce their own electricity etc.  as it stands now the sewage treatment plants aren't equipped to treat the heavy chemicals from different industries ie farming, automobile, pharmaceutical, papermills etc. let alone cleaning medicine out of human waste.

 

as a secondary bummer side note, the article said men in the mid-west had the lowest sperm count.  they ran a nationwide test and theorized new york city men would b/c the water was the most 'polluted'.  don't quote me but i believe they said Iowa men had the lowest.  it baffled the scientists so they investigated and found out the reason was b/c of all the farming pesticides used in the area were being consumed via their drinking water.

Edited July 9, 2014 by ClackerBuzz

[einscodek]

I feel fortunate to be fishing my waters which arent fed from dumps from industries and factories upstream like the Susquehana.. lord knows what those companies dump into it and I am surprise it took so long for those chemicals to affect the fish

Too bad the Susquehana used to be a great place for smallies

 

Folks our quality of life is slowly drowning in the toxic excrement of our high-standard of modern life living.. how much longer can this last?

There are islands of plastic trash floating about in our oceans and they arent even that difficult to spot when yer out there.

[jhoffman]

I saw that recently. I noticed the smallie in the picture had black spot markings like early pre spawn bass have after winter. That kinda stumped me unless it was just coincidental. They are saying its a result of farm fertilizer & runoff. There was a study done in Presque Isle bay that found similar findings from drugs being flushed into the sewer systems & filtering into the water causing sex changes in the fish population. Tough situation.

 

Doesnt surprise me at all, almost every stream in erie has a plant on it. 16 mile is downright disgusting. The susquehanna smallmouth have shown the black spots for years, the knew there was a water quality issue for awhile. Heck, theres virtually no tournament fishing on it anymore, it once was one of the best.

[Balshy Fishing]

That's real sad to hear. My dad's been fishing that river for 30 years and has been saying all this stuff. 

[iceintheveins]

Sad to see this fantastic fishery go down the drain. There are intersexed smallmouth on my smallmouth river, the Yampa, in Colorado as well.

[Balshy Fishing]

Well now there's been a huge increase in mayflies which are apparently a good sign. 

 

It shows that the water quality is getting better so one can only pray, huh? 

[Driftb]

The cause of intersex fish isn't that easy to diagnose.  It turns out that certain plastics are estrogen mimics can also cause intersex condition.  The coating in food cans has been shown to do this in some young men.  I am sure there will be a long list of chemicals eventually  to blame. 

 

As for  water quality in NYC- I hardly think that NYC residents drink "the most polluted water".  NYC residents drink from a reservoir system 100-150 miles from NYC that NYC had the foresight to buy and raze, including all of the surrounding towns and pretty much every farm in the watershed.  They don't allow any motorboats, and they have a gestapo like police force that patrols the res system and I assure you, the water is very unpolluted.  The reservoirs then feed the Delaware river, which is the water source for another ten million or so people downstream, including Philadelphia.  When I lived in Columbus, Ohio, I was amazed to find that the drinking water came from a reservoir just outside the city surrounded by suburbs and If I remember correctly, close to fifteen golf courses. This is the situation that is more typical in the midwest, if not the rest of the country.  I read somewhere that golf courses are one of the worst non-point sources of water pollution, using pesticides, fungicides, algaecides, herbicides, worm killers, etc.  Farms aren't much better. Everything is being saturated with Roundup, which is an endocrine disruptor and has been found to cause Parkinsons disease in humans. These chemicals are almost everywhere, and we really don't have any idea how bad it will get in the futture.  We are going to have to wake up

[Mobydick]

I will not go into detail with my thoughts on this subject, but I had been reporting my findings of "sick" smallies to the fish commission since 2003 and they had done nothing about it until they started finding them in the Juniata and then the Susky. Only THEN did they call me and ask more about what I reported, and this was just 2 years ago. The head guy at the Harrisburg office said my reports were the first they have on record and believes strongly that it may have started in the area I was finding these fish. In the last 2 years they have been up here regularly doing work, but I do not know what exactly it was that they were doing. The Juniata and it's tributaries have been getting better over the last few years but I award that success to mother nature.

 

Ian

[tomustang]

Too many xenoestrogens being introduced