Today’s column was an interview with Jeff Kelbe, Shenandoah Riverkeeper. There was a ton of our conversation that didn’t make it into print. Here are some excerpts:

One of the things I thought was interesting from the talk was that bass and sunfish reproduction has been very good the past 4 years. This has helped mitigate the fish kills. If that were to stop…

KELBE: If reproduction shuts off, we’re going to have problems. We’ve been replacing the dying fish with good reproduction, but historically in Virginia over a 10-year period, you might get 2-3 good years. We’ve had it for four straight years. We’ve been very, very lucky. If we weren’t getting good year classes our river would be very desolate right now.

He also mentioned other effects the kills have had on the area.

KELBE: I think the greatest effect has been on real estate value. It’s going to be very hard to measure in a down market, but it used to be that riverside properties held high value. When I was guide at any given time 10 to 12 of my anglers would be actively trying to buy properties in the Valley for retirement, for recreation, for second homes and that literally just ended in May of 2005. It just dropped off. [The fish kills] really killed that market.

This might have been the scariest aspect of the whole interview: A huge percentage—like anywhere from 80-100—of male fish in the Shenandoah, Cowpasture, and other rivers are what’s called “intersex fish.” Put bluntly, said Kelbe, “our males are growing eggs in their testicles.”

KELBE: It’s 100 percent in Cowpasture. That’s a very remote stream with very few people. That’s very meaningful to me because historically intersex has been linked to sewage treatment outflows and there isn’t any up there. The North Fork [of the Shenandoah] is 80 percent, the South Fork is 80-90 percent.

In other fish they’ve done studies that show that fish with intersex are less protective of their nests; they have less of a drive to procreate. There are behavioral shifts that occur. But we haven’t looked at it on a population scale in the Shenandoah.

Here are a few background articles on intersex fish.

And here...

Posted by Andy Thompson in • Outdoors • Fishing
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