Figure 1 was taken by Mr. John O'Reilly of the Sandy Hook Laboratory many 
years ago, in the early 1970s. Because it probably is one of the better photographs, I have 
used it repeatedly. It shows a winter flounder with large portions of its anal and dorsal 
fins missing. One can see the missing parts; however, if one does not know this fish, the 
dorsal fin normally extends much more than as shown. Quite a bit of fin tissue is missing 
in this fish. In closer view, one would see that there is considerable resolution and that 
the tissue is healing. Rather than a gaping wound, new^tissue has grown to seal off the 
environment from the tissues of the fish. 
Figure 2 presents an old graph, and I do not know what years it represents. 
However, it most probably summarizes data acquired in the early 1970s when we were 
studying the distribution and prevalence of fin rot disease in the New York Bight winter 
flounder. In addition to the distribution and prevalence of the disease in winter flounder, 
we also studied its cause or etiology. Unfortunately the latter is much more difficult to 
resolve. 
We designated areas that we knew, on the basis of obvious characteristics, 
that had compromised environmental quality, such as, Sandy Hook and Raritan Bays. We 
then selected an area that was near these areas, was accessible to us, and was relatively 
"pristine": Great Bay on the south shore of New Jersey. We made surveys over the years 
to contrast the prevalence of fin rot disease in these two regions. With the assistance of 
Dr. Joel O'Connor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ocean 
Assessments Division, we made some statistical evaluations which substantiated that a 
difference in prevalence existed between the two areas. We did not know what 
specifically caused the difference; we only knew that there was a difference. 
For the last five years at least, we have been involved in much offshore 
surveillance, that is, looking at lesion prevalence in fishes from depths greater than 91 
feet and over a broad geographic area. Figure 3 shows that the area surveyed extends 
from the Delaware Bay all the way to the Merrimack River. These studies were done in 
concert with bottom fish stock assessment surveys of the Woods Hole Laboratory. We 
decided to add disease observations to the procedures necessary to determine age, growth, 
fecundity, and predator-prey relationships. We surveyed two offshore areas and several 
inshore ones. We selected these areas for certain reasons, of course, and then on the basis 
of many thousands of observations, looked at the distribution of diseases like fin rot. 
All data gathering and statistics for this were done by a colleague at the Sandy 
Hook Laboratory, Mr. John Ziskowski. The diseases noted do not necessarily compromise 
fish health, but are primarily markers. They are markers because there is evidence in 
some parts of the world of an association, which might be more than casual, between the 
numeric prevalence of these diseases and poor environmental quality. This is not illogical. 
Upon completing these studies, we plotted the distribution of fin rot, 
lymphocystis, ulcers, ambicoloration, and a few other conditions, in the geographic areas 
surveyed. We quite clearly saw that the prevalences of the diseases were discontinuous. 
Higher prevalences occurred in areas adjacent to high population densities. That is not 
unusual. We could have predicted that at the beginning; however, we had to substantiate 
our hypothesis with data. 
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