( ted fish by airborne or terrestrial pre...)Cornell lab confirms deadly fish virus spreading to new species

"Basically, we don’t know how it got here, but it is here and it’s spreading," said Bowser. "It would be wonderful if we did know. However, I don’t think we ever will."

The Great Lakes VHSV is not related to the European or Japanese genotypes and poses no health threat to humans, said Bowser. However, as a general rule, people should avoid eating any fish (or game) that appears abnormal or behaves abnormally. Not all infected fish, however, exhibit symptoms. Some may be carriers, and visible signs of the disease may vary from species to species.

Containing the spread of the virus in New York will require restrictions on the movement of live fish, testing fish and surveillance. For instance, New York state regulations require that bait fish be used in the same body of water from which they were collected unless they have been tested. In Wisconsin, new emergency rules prohibit anglers and boaters from moving live fish and require them to drain their boats and live wells before leaving Wisconsin’s Great Lakes waters, the Mississippi River and those tributaries up to the first impassable dams, according to the Associated Press.

The spread of the virus could have a devastating impact on aquaculture and particularly the channel catfish trade, which constitutes about 80 percent of aquaculture business in the United States, said Bowser. Catfish is a very popular food fish in the Deep South.

"We have detected VHSV in channel catfish in our surveillance efforts," said Bowser. "The ability of the virus to go beyond a carrier state and cause disease in this important aquaculture species is a major research question we plan to investigate this year."
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Source:Cornell University News Service