More Cases Of Whirling Disease Found

[fishjunkie]

Two more Commercial aquaculture facility – Licensed by the Government of Alberta confirmed to have whirling disease yesterday for a total 4 now. I fear they are going to find a lot stocked waters in Alberta with whirling disease.

 

You can find updates here of confirmed detection of it

 

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/animals/aquatic-animals/diseases/reportable/whirling-disease/alberta-2016/eng/1473443992952/1473443993551

 

 

[Dangus]

I don't know if it's more important to keep testing places or to get to the bottom of who dropped the ball so hard.

[BurningChrome]

I don't know if it's more important to keep testing places or to get to the bottom of who dropped the ball so hard.

Keep testing and educating. Need to know the extent of spread and hammering on people to clean their gear between water bodies to slow/halt the spread. Right now all the hatcheries should be shut down and stocking halted. Between four confirmed cases in hatcheries so far it does seem to indicate they're going to point to the origin, like a common source of broodstock or something similar.

[Sage]

Let's support Whirling Disease research by attending FishTales/TU "Providence" movie screening tomorrow night! Bought my ticket today and a biologist will be on hand to talk about the disease just after doors open at 7:00pm.

 

$20 for the movie, biologist talk and TU fundraiser for Whirling Disease research feels like a good deal (IMO)

[Taco]

Too little too late, IMO whirling disease has been present in Alberta waters for at least 20 yrs. I reported a couple incidents of whirling crippled stream trout back in the late 90's and got met with much official doubt

[trailhead]

Us old guys have seen it in the past.

[fishjunkie]

Too little too late, IMO whirling disease has been present in Alberta waters for at least 20 yrs. I reported a couple incidents of whirling crippled stream trout back in the late 90's and got met with much official doubt

I agree that it's been here in Alberta for awhile with nothing done. Fortunately it has not exploded into a big problem despite my fear that for who knows how many years infected hatchery fish have been stocked all over the province.

[Swede]

How does it get into a Commercial aquaculture facility in the first place. Wouldn't you think testing for such diseases would be a mandatory cost of doing business type of thing when your stocking public waters.

[dryfly]

What Taco said. "IMO whirling disease has been present in Alberta waters for at least 20 yrs."

 

Agreed 100%.

[SilverDoctor]

Too little too late, IMO whirling disease has been present in Alberta waters for at least 20 yrs. I reported a couple incidents of whirling crippled stream trout back in the late 90's and got met with much official doubt

Yep it was widely discussed at many a fisheries/public meeting and soundly put down as conjecture and fear mongering. I even did a letter writing campaign to add equipment cleaning into the Sportsfishing regs. Hoping they at least do this. But the Barn door has been left open for a long time.

[Ricinus]

This is sounding like another case of total mismanagement of our fisheries..

 

Mike

[Sage]

Great information on Whirling Disease last night from the TU Biologist (Lesley) at the FishTales Providence fundraiser......

[Flyfisher]

Great information on Whirling Disease last night from the TU Biologist (Lesley) at the FishTales Providence fundraiser......

 

Sage: any chance of a synopsis on what you heard at the meeting or a link to some info?

[dryfly]

Taco said that WD has been here for a while and I agreed. Seems so incredibly improbable that it would not be here given the links between our waters and those in Montana. Those links being anglers and birds.

 

Way back in 1999, I wrote an article about WD on FOAL, here:

http://flyanglersonline.com/features/canada/can42.php

 

In that I wrote

 

• Whirling disease thrives in streams just hours away in southern Montana. I could fish in southern Montana in the morning, and wade into the Crowsnest River in southern Alberta for the evening rise. If I had been fishing in a Montana stream infested with whirling disease I would almost certainly infect the Crowsnest with this dreaded pest that was carried in the mud on my waders!

   

• It's that simple folks. At least it's reportedly that simple, but some argue that it is not spread so easily. They claim that it should have spread to our rivers by Canada Geese or other birds that are common inhabitants of both sides of the USA-Canada border. Perhaps.

   

• Can geese (that wade the shores of southern Montana streams) fly non-stop to southern Alberta? Surely they would rarely do this without resting along the way and presumably rinsing mud off in ponds and sloughs. The majority of southern birds (that could carry the disease) would end up on the Great Plains of Alberta where there are few trout. But I admit there are a lot of geese and other birds, and this has to be a real possibility, if not highly probable.

Perhaps spread by birds was/is not highly probable but still a possibility and with time the probability simply increased.

 

Just read that birds like gulls readily spread the disease as they eat dead fish on shore.

 

If it flares up, then it might be new. If it remains at low levels in the next few years, then perhaps it has been here a while.

 

Who knows?

 

Clive

[Dangus]

To be honest, I hope it has been here for years. Maybe the great fishing on the Bow over the last few years is just it returning to form? Although, I don't have decades of experience on that river to compare.

Bothers me more that it is in hatcheries. It shows a total lack of safe guard. For all they knew, Canada was WD-Free.

[DonAndersen]

Bron, l'll always recall Dick Vincent, the biologist that discovered WD in the Madison, telling the WD conference in Calgary how excited Angler's were catching all the big trout in the Madison during the same time when the disease was ravaging the small trout.

Sounds like a parallel to what is happening on the Bow.

 

Don

[monger]

One good thing is that the Bow's spawning streams don't have a lot of mud. Hopefully that will limit the host worm population

[Dangus]

Fair enough, don. I thought about that too. The way those big runs between police and mac come alive with 6-8" fish on an evening hatch gives me hope that things are different.

[bcubed]

Found in the Crow.

 

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/animals/aquatic-animals/diseases/reportable/2017/alberta-2017/eng/1492020203162/1492020203648

[RossMurphy]

Found in the Crow.

 

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/animals/aquatic-animals/diseases/reportable/2017/alberta-2017/eng/1492020203162/1492020203648

Additional detections of whirling disease from the ongoing sampling and testing do not mean the disease is spreading. Whirling disease may have been present for several years.

[monger]

Then the Elk....

[bcubed]

Additional detections of whirling disease from the ongoing sampling and testing do not mean the disease is spreading. Whirling disease may have been present for several years.

At some point it did spread, we do not know if thats now, or ten years ago. Regardless, there needs to be a concerted effort by the angling community to be proactive about cleaning before moving between watersheds moving forward. This is pretty obvious a human-transfer, regardless if the spread is now or 10 years+ ago, and we need to stop further spread if that is possible.

[BurningChrome]

Then the Elk....

If it's in the Crow it's almost definitely in the Elk. Just far too many people going back and forth between those two systems for it not to be. I'll still be cleaning all my gear whenever I travel between the two though just in case

 

At some point it did spread, we do not know if thats now, or ten years ago. Regardless, there needs to be a concerted effort by the angling community to be proactive about cleaning before moving between watersheds moving forward. This is pretty obvious a human-transfer, regardless if the spread is now or 10 years+ ago, and we need to stop further spread if that is possible.

If anything this should be showing us that these things are going to spread if we're complacent. WD almost certainly came up here from people fishing in Montana. Now they also have multiple cases of quagga and zebra mussels along with this new PKX thing. If we continue to be complacent then we'll end up with those up here too.

[SilverDoctor]

Too little too late, IMO whirling disease has been present in Alberta waters for at least 20 yrs. I reported a couple incidents of whirling crippled stream trout back in the late 90's and got met with much official doubt

This..... I have reported fish years ago with the symptoms.

[RossMurphy]

At some point it did spread, we do not know if thats now, or ten years ago. Regardless, there needs to be a concerted effort by the angling community to be proactive about cleaning before moving between watersheds moving forward. This is pretty obvious a human-transfer, regardless if the spread is now or 10 years+ ago, and we need to stop further spread if that is possible.

That was a quote from the site, not my own comments.

 

I agree that we should all be trying our best to prevent the spread of all invasive species.

 

Sadly however I believe that when things like this spread it's by people who've never even heard of whiling disease.

Hikers, boaters, kids, dogs, ducks and geese... river users come in all forms and not just fishermen.

 

That's not to say that you should just say eff it and ignore the problem. Or that just because it's in one part of the river that all parts are affected. It's known to affect hatchlings more easily and so some tribs that are free of the disease can spawn healthy fish in watersheds that are deemed as infected.