Source of Striped Bass Disease Baffles Investigators

By: Associated Press | WSLS
Published: January 28, 2008

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(AP) - Scientists are still trying to find out more about a disease that's afflicting more than half of the striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.
Mycobacteriosis (MYE'-koh-back-TEER'-ee-OH'-sis) or myco, as fishermen call it, is a wasting disease that leaves rockfish with ugly red lesions and seems to eventually kill them. Researchers aren't sure how the fish get the bacteria.
Wolfgang Vogelbein, a fish pathology expert at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, says scientists are in the middle of a three-year study of myco, which has been noticeable for the past decade or so.
He says researchers tag stripers in the Rappahannock River every spring and fall.
They pay a $20 reward to fishermen who return tagged fish, and have gotten back about 800 out of 10,000 to study.
Vogelbein says VIMS is trying to get funding for a grant to track where myco originates, using new tests that can quickly search for the bacteria in the water.