USGS Science for Aquatic Animal Health

By Maureen K. Purcell and M. Camille Harris. USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3091, October 2016.

Western Fisheries Research Center scientists used a virus genetic-typing system to trace a virus among free-ranging salmon and trout; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers used it to redesign a hatchery's water supply, which sharply cut viral disease. USGS photo.

Aquatic animals under stress

Healthy waters support a rich mix of plants, invertebrates, fish and wildlife. Now climate change, water shortages, habitat change, invasive species and contaminants stress aquatic animals — and stress makes disease more common and more severe:

• Chesapeake Bay: recurring fish kills in the upper watershed tied to many opportunistic pathogens.
• Puget Sound: an estimated 80 percent of endangered young steelhead die within two weeks of reaching the sea; disease is under investigation.
• Great Lakes: viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) invaded a fishery worth about 7 billion dollars a year, causing die-offs and turning up in 28 fish species.
• West Coast: millions of dying sea stars prompted studies of sea star wasting disease.

What the USGS does

The USGS supports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, USDA, Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA and many local, State and Tribal agencies:

1. Surveillance, die-off investigations and diagnostics in the field;
2. Lab studies to find causes, weigh risk factors and build detection and mitigation tools;
3. Models of how disease spreads and affects populations.

The goal: science-based ways to restore aquatic health and reduce disease risk.

Why the USGS

The Department of the Interior manages one-fifth of the nation's land, including freshwater, estuarine and marine habitats, and must protect their health while supporting commercial, recreational and cultural use. As its science agency, the USGS gives Interior and other agencies unbiased science and tools.

USGS science centers conducting aquatic animal health research. Map: USGS.

More than eight USGS centers work on aquatic animal disease:

• Western Fisheries Research Center (Washington): facilities for safe infectious disease trials in fresh- and saltwater fish, a high-containment lab for foreign diseases, and the sole World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reference lab for infectious hematopoietic necrosis and bacterial kidney disease of salmon and trout.
• Leetown Science Center: emerging pathogens and stressors such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes watersheds.
• National Wildlife Health Center–Honolulu Field Station: the tumor disease that is the leading cause of green turtle strandings, plus reef fish, echinoderm and coral health.
• St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center and the Honolulu station: coral reef disease and its environmental drivers.
• Also: the National Wildlife Health Center, Columbia Environmental, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences, Western Ecological, Alaska and Wetland and Aquatic research centers.

Leetown Science Center: a scientist collects liver samples from a wild white sucker from the Milwaukee River, work that advanced biomarkers and gene-expression methods for fish health. USGS photo.

Honolulu Field Station scientists work with NOAA on why threatened green turtles die in Hawaii and the Pacific. USGS photo.

Western Ecological Research Center work linked intertidal temperature to "withering syndrome" in black abalone, the most endangered species on the California coast. USGS photo.

Sources

Based on Science to Support Aquatic Animal Health, by Maureen K. Purcell and M. Camille Harris, USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3091, U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The map and photographs are taken from the fact sheet's PDF.