DEC Contact: Lori Severino, (518) 402-8000 January 07, 2015
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DEC Studying Ongoing Salmon River Steelhead DisorderNutritional Deficiency Strongly Implicated in Increased Steelhead Mortality in Lake Ontario Tributaries |
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DEC Taking Steps to Meet Egg Quotas to Ensure Robust Steelhead Population Adult steelhead (a strain of rainbow trout) returning from Lake Ontario to the Salmon River in Oswego County are exhibiting signs of stress and elevated mortality rates due to an apparent thiamine (vitamin B) deficiency, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens announced today.
In mid-November, DEC fisheries staff began to receive reports of steelhead swimming erratically in the Salmon River and higher mortality of the species. More recent reports indicate similar behavior in steelhead in other Lake Ontario tributaries. Steelhead are an important component of Lake Ontario’s sport fishery, which a Cornell University study valued at over $112 million in angler expenditures in New York annually. Great Lakes fish predators (including salmon and steelhead) that feed primarily on alewife are prone to thiamine deficiency. Alewife, an invasive bait fish in the Great Lakes, are known to contain thiaminase, an enzyme that degrades thiamine. A thiamine deficiency can impact egg quality and the survival of eggs and newly hatched fish, and, in severe cases, can cause the death of adult fish. DEC is taking steps to meet its spring 2015 steelhead egg-take targets at Salmon River Hatchery, and will work with Great Lakes agency partners to provide assistance in meeting egg take quotas, if needed. Staff from DEC’s Rome Fish Disease Control Unit and Salmon River Hatchery are preemptively injecting adult steelhead returning to the hatchery with thiamine. Thiamine-injected fish will be held in outdoor raceways at the hatchery and fed a diet fortified with vitamin B to improve the likelihood of successful steelhead egg collections in 2015.
For more information, contact DEC’s Bureau of Fisheries (Cape Vincent Fisheries Station) at (315) 654-2147. |
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