Ever been frustrated by illegal fishermen who always seem to get away with taking more than their fair share and hurting the fishery?  Well, one fisherman in the Phillipines was dealt with a dose of karma this weekend when he had his arm blown off by some homemade dynamite that exploded before he could toss it into the water.  As one police officer said, “It seemed that nature has gotten back at the victim”.

See the story here

The federal Bureau of Reclamation accidentally caused a huge fish kill in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta recently while draining water to perform repair on a levee.  After draining water, fish started floating belly-up on the surface in hordes, to the point where a local marina owner estimated fish losses to be in the tens of thousands. 

This came after a U.S. Fish and Wildlife study that predicted no significant impact on populations of endangered delta smelt.  The California Department of Fish and Game is investigating the losses.   

See the story here

Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personell at Springville Fish Hatchery in Springville, Utah, have been forced to kill 60,000 trout after whirling disease has again been discovered in fish housed in the facility.  This is the second time since 2005 that the discovery of the disease has caused the hatchery to shut down. 

All of the Springville fish will be killed, and the hatchery will seek an alternative water supply from a deep underground aquifer before reopening the hatchery.

Whirling disease, which is caused by the parasite Myxobolus cerebralis, was first discovered in Germany and is now spread throughout the United States.  The disease causes skeletal deformation and neurological damage in juvenile fish, and causes high mortality rates to many fish populations, while having lesser effects on others.

Whirling disease can not be spread to humans.  The Utah DWR is shutting down the hatchery to prevent the possible spread of whirling disease to fish populations in the wild.

Salt Lake Tribune Article

A couple of days ago, I linked to a Minnesota story about the destruction to a state fish hatchery caused by area flooding.  Apparently, human infrastructure wasn’t the only thing affected by the flooding.  Reports are showing that the flooding severely affected many trout streams, washing fish downstream, and widening stream banks and filling of holes that were once used by fish.  Wide, shallow streams are almost never good trout producers.  Let’s hope, for the anglers’ sake, that the damage wasn’t as bad as it appears.

See the story here

In a related story, storms in Summit County, Colorado appear to have killed a large number of fish in the Snake River.  Officials are unsure whether or not the fish died as a result of toxic inputs to the stream resulting from mining, or an incredibly high sediment load.

Story here