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Bulging eyes, erratic swimming, darkened skin and a swollen abdomen.
These are the symptoms of a mysterious new bacterial infection killing tens of thousands of fish in California right now, reports the Daily Press in Victorville.
A bacteria identified as Lactococcus garvieae, which had never been found in the state until April, has caused a mass outbreak of disease killing up to 60,000 fish at the Mojave River Hatchery in San Bernardino County.
In measures that are hard not to compare the coronavirus pandemic ravaging America, around 3 million rainbow trout and other species have been quarantined as scientists try to understand the novel pathogen that has resisted treatments to cure it.
Fish pathologists do not know where the bacteria came from in the first place.
“Honestly, we’re learning new things about this every single day,” Jay Rowan, an environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Daily Press.
Treatments attempting to rid the hatcheries of the infection have so far been largely futile. Staff at the Mojave River Hatchery gave the fish an antibiotic feed that cost over $75,000, but the bacteria is still spreading, according to a statement from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Scientists have concluded that the bacteria is more deadly in warmer environments. The disease has since been found at two other hatcheries at a cooler climate in the Owens Valley, but those have seen almost no deaths.
Courtesy of sfgate.com
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