Shenandoah Riverkeeper

Hey Folks,

If you fish in, swim in, play in or just like to look at The Shenandoah River, please consider coming to this party.  What a great way to show your support for the river, and to make a contribution to Shenandoah Riverkeeper.  Please sign up before July 4th, if possible, to give us time to prepare enough food and drink. 

Directions to Rodeo and Campground

Our Valley’s very own Briery Branch bluegrass band will be follow a monster cookout we’re preparing complemented by an assortment of beverages, and it’s all on the banks of the South Fork Shenandoah (right where this picture depicts).  As an added bonus, fishing guides and outdoor writers are coming from all over the Mid-Atlantic to show their solidarity and support for Shenandoah Riverkeeper’s work and to show their love of this river and others in the area.  Camping Saturday night is included in the admission fee and I hear a few brave souls are already in.  Many will be canoeing the river the day before the event, rentals are available from these canoe liveries:

Front Royal Canoe Company

Downriver Canoe Company

The party is Saturday July 19th, at 5:00 PM. Right now you can open, print, fill out and mail the sign up sheet.  Please don’t wait until the last minute.  I want to make sure we have enough food and drink, and there’s a chance that we’ll have to limit the number attending if this grows as big as we think it might.  Please consider carpooling. 

To sign up, either print and mail this in:

shenandoah-riverkeeper-rodeo-sign-up.pdf

Or go to this website and sign up online:

Online Registration for Rodeo

Thanks for considering and I hope to see you there,

Jeff Kelble - Shenandoah Riverkeeper

Friends of the North Fork Shenandoah River (FNFSR) just published their study which will play a critical roll in the Fish Kill Task Force’s effort to measure organic chemical contaminants in the North Fork.   Click here for a .pdf file of their report or click here for Friends of the North Fork’s Home Page.  Thank you Friends for raising the money through Foundations and Virginia’s Environmental Endowment.

I am spellbound by analysis of tho “polar”  vs. “non-polar” organic compounds.  The polar molucules dissolve in water and are likely to present consistent exposure to animals in the water, but they do not bio-accumulate.  The non-polar are less likely to be present consistently but do bio-accumulate.  Testing done to measure estrogenicity (and possible link to intersex) showed the polar compounds caused hormonal reactions in Yeast Estrogen Screen Assays, the non-polar compounds did not.  

Additionally, the Jurkats, or Human Acute T-Cell Leukemia testing  also showed an immune system suppression caused by the polar compounds.  Subsequently no response was measured from exposure to the non-polar compounds.  This opens up as many questions as it answers but again it represents a step toward figuring this fish kill mess out!

  Jeff Kelble-Shenandoah Riverkeeper

usgs_final_report_passive_samplers_shenandoah_2007.pdf

usgs_final_report_blazer_intersex_potomac_drainage.pdf

Water is my #1 concern, cause I’m geeky that way.  But I was surprised to find that America’s to 4 environmental concerns related to water.  Here’s the link to the Gallup Poll’s Website.  Check out their graph below (credit to Gallup):

Regrettably, we need to again be on the lookout for the development of fish kill issues.  Many of you have tackle box tags with my contact information and that of DEQ and VDGIF fish kill task force cochairs.  If you don’t, and in the event you begin to observe sick or dieing fish, please click here for WHO TO CALL.   Clicking that link will take you to last year’s blog which has a bunch of photographs showing what sick fish look like and contact information to report what you see.  For this year, I can’t say what we need better than Ted Turner from Valley Regional Office of DEQ:

“We are now in the process for planning our monitoring approach to the fish kill this coming spring.  The Fish Kill task force has formed several subcommittees to address various aspects of these plans, including responses to reported fish kills.  As you may be aware, the State budget for ’08 is very tight, so analytical expenses will be kept as low as possible.  However, some valuable yet relatively inexpensive observations can be made that will greatly contribute to our understanding of the kills.  Specifically, we need to establish where on the river a kill begins by going upstream from the initial site at which the kill was reported, until no more dead fish are observed.  Also, it would be valuable to know if kills are correlated w/ storm events.  There was a fair amount of observations last year that supported this hypothesis, but testing this would be very useful.  As you can imagine, a quick response to reports and storm events will be very important.
 
What we are looking for this season are volunteers who would be willing to go out on the rivers after fish kills are reported, to look for dead and dying fish and estimate the extent of the kill.  We’d also like some volunteers to go out before and after storms and look for dead and dying fish.  From our observations in the past 4 years, this isn’t as easy as it seems.  We’d like to get our volunteers together, and do some training for investigating the kills, such as how and where to find the fish, identifying species if possible, marking locations w/ GPS, and collecting water quality measurements (temp, pH, D.O., etc.) where possible.
 
We’d like to find volunteers who’d be willing to cover one or more specific rivers for each event, and spread ourselves out to cover as many river miles as possible.  The DEQ and DGIF will plan on putting put some teams out as well.  Generally, counting the fish is easiest from canoe, and more area can be covered, but valuable observations can also be made by driving to access points and wading along the shore, where safety permits”  - Ted Turner

Thanks for your efforts valley residents and shenandoah paddlers!Jeff Kelble, Shenandoah Riverkeeper (540) 837-1479jeff@shenandoahriverkeeper.org  

Intersex Study Released!

Vicki Blazer at USGS released her paper with intersex findings related to Potomac Watershed (includes Shenandoah).  This article does a very nice job of summing up the conclusions:

chesapeake-bay-journal-study-links-agriculture-to-increase-of-intersex-fish-in-potomac-basin-march-2008.htm
Here’s Vicki Blazer’s review of her intersex work:

chesapeake-bay-journal-study-links-agriculture-to-increase-of-intersex-fish-in-potomac-basin-march-2008.htm

Here’s a copy of the study itself:

chesapeake-bay-journal-study-links-agriculture-to-increase-of-intersex-fish-in-potomac-basin-march-2008.htm

(This letter from Don Kain, Co-Chair Shenandoah Fish Kill Task Force)

Just before the first of the year, we received Dr. Paul Bowser’s preliminary findings on virus testing for Viral Hemorragic Septicemia (VHS) and Largemouth Bass Virus (LMB-v) on fish collected in areas experiencing fish kills (and during fish kill events) in 2007. A total of 40 fish (from 4 sites) were evaluated.The good news: No fish were positive for VHS. Only 4 fish were positive for LMB-v. We previously had found LMB-v in some specimens from 2006.We previously had found LMB-v in some specimens from 2006.Some details on sites and findings from Cornell are below.We previously had found LMB-v in some specimens from 2006.Some details on sites and findings from Cornell are below.The most immediate good news is that there was no VHSV detected by the qRT-PCR in any of the samples we had tested. Please note that the testing we did consisted of the 20 smallmouth (SMB) bass Don had designated as priority samples (10 SMB from South Fork Shenandoah - Hazard’s Mill and 10 SMB from James River - Buchanan) and the 20 samples Vicki has selected from her archives (10 SMB from Cowpasture Site - SR1 and 10 SMB from North Fork Shenandoah Site - SR3).
For the LMBV samples, we did find positives by the qPCR at the following locations:

Don KainWater Monitoring & Compliance Mgr.DEQ Valley Regional Office