SINDERMANN: POLLUTION-ASSOCIATED DISEASES AND ABNORMALITIES 



street and Howse (1977) stated that (with refer- 

 ence to the silver perch strain) "prevalence 

 appears to relate to rainfall, suggesting that toxi- 

 cants, salinity, or enriched water could play a 

 major role in infections." 



Lymphocystis in striped bass, Morone sa.xatilis, 

 on the U.S. east coast seems to have some tenuous 

 association with heated effluents. Recent unpub- 

 lished observations by staff members of the Sandy 

 Hook Laboratory (J. S. Young, Fishery Biologist, 

 Northeast Fisheries Center Sandy Hook Labora- 

 tory, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, 

 Highlands, NJ 07732. Pers. commun., September 

 1975), pointed to high prevalence of lymphocystis 

 disease (Figure 6) in limited samples of striped 

 bass overwintering in the heated effluent of a Long 

 Island generating station (Northport, N.Y.). This 

 disease is considered rare in striped bass 

 (Anonymous 1951; Krantz 1970), and its unusual 

 abundance in a localized population may well be 

 related to the abnormally high winter tempera- 

 ture regime in which the population exists, or to 

 abnormal crowding, with consequent increase in 

 stress and ease of transfer of the pathogen. The 

 high temperature may promote survival or trans- 

 fer of the pathogen, or lower resistance of the host, 

 or provoke latent infections into patency, result- 

 ing in grossly recognizable stages of infection. 

 Lymphocystis is considered to be highly infec- 

 tious; initial lesions often develop where injuries 

 to the fish have occurred; and lymphocystis virus 

 reaches peak infectivity when water temperatures 



are high (Midlige and Malsberger 1968). Some or 

 all of these factors may be important in fostering 

 the high prevalences observed in striped bass. An 

 important concern about fish diseases such as 

 lymphocystis in populations overwintering in 

 heated effluents is that a focus of infection will be 

 provided for incoming spring migrants. 



STRESS-PROVOKED LATENT 

 INFECTIONS 



A number of microbial diseases offish have been 

 shown to be provoked into patency by environ- 

 mental stress (Wedemeyer 1970; Snieszko 1974). 

 This seems to be true for kidney disease and 

 furunculosis of salmonids, which often exist in 

 carrier or latent states that can develop into active 

 infections if fish are stressed. It is also probably 

 true for anaerobic bacterial (Eubacterium sp.) in- 

 fections of mullet and 10 other species offish from 

 Biscayne Bay (Udey et al. 1977). A report of vib- 

 riosis in eels held in freshwater (Reidsaether et al. 

 1977) suggested that latent infections with Vibrio 

 anguillarum produced disease and mortalities 

 when eels were exposed experimentally to 30-60 

 ixgl\ copper for 50 days in freshwater. Similarly an 

 epizootic oi Aeromonas liquefaciens (= A. hydro- 

 phila) in Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, and the 

 sucker, Catostomus commersoni, in the Miramichi 

 River, Canada, seemed to be related to combined 

 stresses of copper and zinc pollution and high 

 water temperatures (Pippy and Hare 1969). 



Figure 6. — Lymphocystis disease in striped bass from heated effluent of a power plant. 



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