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Virus halts shipments of fish from lakes PDF
Buffalo News   

A government crackdown on live fish shipments from the Great Lakes states is intended to check the spread of a deadly aquatic virus, but critics say it could devastate the region's fishing industry.

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In an emergency order last week, the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service banned interstate transport of 37 species of live fish from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin - the eight states adjacent to the Great Lakes. Importing those species from the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec also was prohibited.

The agency's target is viral hemorrhagic septicemia, which poses no risk to humans but causes internal bleeding in fish. The virus was discovered in the region last year and is blamed for fish kills in Lakes Erie, Ontario and St. Clair and the St. Lawrence River.

Species susceptible to the virus include popular sport fish such as Chinook and coho salmon, rainbow trout, walleye and yellow perch.

Federal officials do not know how the virus, long a problem in Europe, reached the Great Lakes. But state fishery managers say they believe it came in ballast tanks of oceangoing cargo ships, considered a leading source of exotic species such as zebra mussels that are damaging the lakes' ecology.

The federal agency has scheduled a meeting with state and industry representatives Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to discuss regulations aimed at containing the virus.

The emergency order "just puts everything on hold until we can figure out what we're going to do," spokesman Jim Rogers said.

But some in the region said they were blindsided by the order, which could be especially hard on commercial fish farms and live bait vendors. It also could hamper stocking programs essential to the region's $4.5 billion fishery, critics said.

"This order will completely eliminate long-established trades of sport fish between state agencies that are crucial to the maintenance, restoration and enhancement of sport fish programs" in the region, Sam Flood, acting director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, wrote in a letter to the federal agency.

Dan Vogler, who raises rainbow trout in Harrietta, about 30 miles south of Traverse City, said the order had taken away 70 percent of his customers. He sends live fish to other states for sale in restaurants and markets and for stocking lakes and rivers.

The virus hasn't been detected on any fish farm in the Great Lakes region, Vogler said. Michigan has 47 fish farms, with combined sales of $2.4 million in 2005, according to the USDA.

Industry spokesmen said the ban could mean live bait shortages and higher prices.
 
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