Behind the Headlines

An article last week discussed the presence of VHS, or Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia, in the Great Lakes. It’s a fish virus that’s spreading partly through minnows, and a lot of bait shop owners are upset that it could increase their costs or ruin their bait business by requiring them to import bait from distance areas instead of buying them from companies that harvest minnows and other bait from the Great Lakes.

A federal order banned the sale of Great Lakes bait without a veterinary certification that the bait wasn’t infected.

The threat to the bait shops is real (see www.savethebaitbusiness.com), but it’s also scary about what it might mean to Lake Erie’s larger fish industry.

“We’re considering all of Lake Erie a hot zone” for the disease, said Gary Towns, supervisor of the Lake Erie Management Unit for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

He said more restrictions will come down the pike about who can have fish, how they can be moved, and sold. “There’s going to be a lot of very sticky issues with this disease.

VHS took a toll on drum fish last year, and also caused a less severe die-off among perch and muskie.

“It almost operates under the ice,” Mr. Towns said. “It’s a cold-weather disease. Once the ice went out last year, we found fish that were decomposing already.”