<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"><head><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:AllowPNG/><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--></head><body><div class="ydp36faeaf5yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px;"><div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature" dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">I heard a presentation on this recently and I heard that it wasn't a problem for Klamath-Trinity salmon at this time. <br></div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature" dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature" dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">TS<br></div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature" dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature" dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><a href="https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7031751f-197e-427f-be7e-5e87a6e38c54" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="enhancr_card_3007076493">A strange die-off of baby Chinook salmon</a></div><div><br></div><div id="ydpe60c099benhancr_card_3007076493" class="ydpe60c099byahoo-link-enhancr-card ydpe60c099bymail-preserve-class ydpe60c099bymail-preserve-style" style="max-width:400px;font-family:YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" data-url="https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7031751f-197e-427f-be7e-5e87a6e38c54" data-type="YENHANCER" data-size="MEDIUM" contenteditable="false"><a href="https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7031751f-197e-427f-be7e-5e87a6e38c54" style="text-decoration-line: none !important; 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color: rgb(38, 40, 42); max-width: 314px;">A strange die-off of baby Chinook salmon</h2><p class="ydpe60c099bcard-description" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(151, 155, 167);">A strange die-off of baby Chinook salmon</p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div class="ydp36faeaf5signature"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><div class="ydp6805c0articleContent">A strange die-off of baby Chinook salmon <div class="ydp6805c0contentHead ydp6805c0font35">
</div>
<div class="ydp6805c0contentDeck ydp6805c0font25"><p>Scientists find that the fish near Shasta Dam were suffering from a vitamin B1 deficiency.</p></div>
<div class="ydp6805c0contentImages"><div class="ydp6805c0contentImage"><img src="https://misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/IMG_chinookry_2_1_AM6K5DM5.jpg" alt="" class="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 800px;"><div class="ydp6805c0contentCaption ydp6805c0font13">A
TRAY at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Redding holds
offspring of endangered Chinook salmon that scientists injected with
thiamine. (Heather Bell UC Davis )</div></div><div class="ydp6805c0imageControls"><div class="ydp6805c0imageCount">Image 1 of 2</div>NEXT IMAGE</div></div>
<div class="ydp6805c0contentByline ydp6805c0font15"><p>By Susanne Rust</p></div>
<div class="ydp6805c0contentBody ydp6805c0font15">
<p>The biologists working in a
fish hatchery near Shasta Dam grew increasingly concerned last year
when newly hatched salmon fry began to act strangely — swimming around
and around, in tight, corkscrewing motions, before spiraling to their
deaths at the bottom of the tanks.</p><p>Certain
runs of Chinook salmon in California are imperiled; the hatcheries and
the fry raised there are the federal government’s last-ditch effort to
sustain these ecologically and economically vital fish populations.</p><p>So,
when scientists observed the young salmon’s screwball behavior, they
reached out to their networks in oceanography, ecology and fisheries:
Had anyone seen anything similar? Did anybody know what was going on?</p><p>As it happened, scientists and hatchery managers around the Great Lakes <a name="web" class="ydp6805c0character" href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/lack-vitamin-b1-killing-great-lakes-fish" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">had observed similar abnormalities in lake trout, beginning in the 1960s</a>.
Although it took a few decades, scientists eventually unlocked part of
the mystery: The fish had a deficiency of thiamine, or vitamin B1. </p><p>Thiamine
is essential among living things for critical metabolic processes, such
as energy production and nervous system functioning. Humans and animals
acquire the vitamin through food, or in the case of modern humans,
supplements. It is created by certain plants, phytoplankton, bacteria
and fungi.</p><p>People, plants and animals can’t live without it.</p><p>The
essential nutrient was first identified in the early 1900s by a Dutch
physician, Christiaan Eijkman, who noted a similarity between the human
disease beriberi and a similarly debilitating syndrome in chickens. He
was awarded the <a name="web" class="ydp6805c0character" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1929/eijkman/biographical/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1929</a>.</p><p>Soon
after, thiamine deficiencies were identified as the cause of scores of
die-offs in domesticated animals, such as sheep, cattle, mink and goats.
It became standard practice for veterinarians to prescribe the vitamin
to livestock.</p><p>Beriberi in
humans was also linked to thiamine deficiency. Symptoms include weight
loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and
pain in the limbs, and irregular heartbeats. It is a risk factor for
alcoholics and those who eat diets composed of primarily white rice.</p><p>It’s
also an affliction that researchers say may be appearing more
frequently among wild populations of animals — including fish, mussels,
birds, moose and wolves.</p><p>In the case of the California salmon, federal scientists and hatchery workers decided to see if their hunch was correct.</p><p>U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees bathed the young fry in vitamin-enriched water. </p><p>The fish started acting normal.</p><p>“The
great thing about hatcheries is they provide an opportunity” to observe
broader issues that may be playing out on the salmon life cycle, said
Rachel Johnson, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and UC Davis. It allowed the researchers to
recognize a deficiency that is probably affecting wild populations, too.</p><p>Johnson,
who came to the project after the deficiency had been identified, then
worked to take the experiment one step further. She and her team pulled
60 adult winter run female salmon and treated half with thiamine, the
other half with a placebo. The eggs and fry from the treated females
thrived. About half of those from the placebo group didn’t.</p><p>“This
suggests that a significant portion of the wild winter run spawning in
the river may have been significantly impacted by thiamine deficiency,”
she said.</p><p>California’s
winter run Chinook are federally listed as endangered, the spring run is
threatened, and the fall and late fall runs are the dominant source to
the commercial fishery. The names refer to when <a name="web" class="ydp6805c0character enhancr_card_2404167926" href="https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Chinook-Salmon#:~:text=Fall%2Drun%20Chinook%20Salmon%20migrate,from%20January%20through%20mid%2DApril." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the four subpopulations make their migrations to high-elevation spawning waters,</a> nearly all of which were blocked by dams decades ago.</p><div><br></div><div id="ydp10cba4bcenhancr_card_2404167926" class="ydp10cba4bcyahoo-link-enhancr-card ydp10cba4bcyahoo-link-enhancr-not-allow-cover ydp10cba4bcymail-preserve-class ydp10cba4bcymail-preserve-style" style="max-width:400px;font-family:YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" data-url="https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Chinook-Salmon#:~:text=Fall%2Drun%20Chinook%20Salmon%20migrate,from%20January%20through%20mid%2DApril." data-type="YENHANCER" data-size="MEDIUM" contenteditable="false"><a href="https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Chinook-Salmon#:~:text=Fall%2Drun%20Chinook%20Salmon%20migrate,from%20January%20through%20mid%2DApril." style="text-decoration-line: none !important; text-decoration-style: solid !important; text-decoration-color: currentcolor !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;" class="ydp10cba4bcyahoo-enhancr-cardlink" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><table class="ydp10cba4bccard-wrapper ydp10cba4bcyahoo-ignore-table" style="max-width:400px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="400"><table class="ydp10cba4bccard ydp10cba4bcyahoo-ignore-table" style="max-width:400px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(224, 228, 233);border-radius:2px" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td><table class="ydp10cba4bccard-info ydp10cba4bcyahoo-ignore-table" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; position: relative; z-index: 2; width: 100%; max-width: 400px; border-radius: 0px 0px 2px 2px; border-top: 1px solid rgb(224, 228, 233);" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;padding:16px 0 16px 12px;vertical-align:top;border-radius:0 0 0 2px"></td><td style="vertical-align:middle;padding:12px 24px 16px 12px;width:99%;font-family:YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;border-radius:0 0 2px 0"><h2 class="ydp10cba4bccard-title" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-family: YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); max-width: 314px;">Chinook Salmon</h2><p class="ydp10cba4bccard-description" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(151, 155, 167);">Conservation status, management efforts and general information about Chinook Salmon in California</p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><p>The next question was the cause of the vitamin deficiency.</p><p>In
the case of the fish in the Great Lakes, stomach content analyses
showed that lake trout and salmon had been feeding heavily on alewives,
which contain an enzyme known as thiaminase that breaks down thiamine.</p><p>In
2019 and 2020, reports from commercial anglers off the Central
California coast, as well as from bird biologists at the Farallon
Islands and Año Nuevo Island, indicated an unusually large anchovy
presence. </p><p>Nate Mantua, a
fisheries researcher with NOAA in Santa Cruz, found that the salmon were
gorging on the small, silvery fish by examining the stomach contents of
some local, commercially harvested salmon.</p><p>Anchovies, like alewives, he said, are rich in thiaminase. </p><p>Combine
the observations of funny-acting fry, anchovy-filled stomachs, and
thiamine supplements that seem to work, and it seemed the culprit had
been found.</p><p>But Mantua and others think there may be more to the story than a simple, isolated vitamin deficiency. </p><p>“We’re
looking at a big ecosystem disruption,” said Clifford Kraft, a
professor of environmental science at Cornell University. “All of these
anchovies in this unusual band along the coast, it’s a sign that things
are changing.”</p><p>And not just the climate, he said. </p><p>He
referred to the work of Lennart Balk, an environmental biochemist at
Stockholm University in Sweden, who has been documenting thiamine
deficiencies in a range of species around the Baltic Sea and elsewhere
for decades. His work has caught the attention of other scientists,
including the editorial staff of the peer-reviewed journal Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, which in 2018 labeled worldwide thiamine
deficiencies “as a possible driver of wildlife population declines” and
called it an “emerging” issue.</p><p>“I
think it’s been going on for a number of decades,” said Balk, who noted
that more than 75% of egg-laying bird species he investigated around
the Baltic Sea in 2009 were suffering from a deficiency.</p><p>“We are witnessing mass extinctions at a global scale,” he said. “This could be connected. This could be very important.” </p><p>
Though Balk thinks thiamine deficiencies could be caused by industrial
or pharmaceutical agents and Kraft wonders if sewage outflow of
transformed thiamine could be disrupting the availability of the
vitamin, others are calling on the scientific world to first gather
baseline data on B1 levels in the environment.</p><p>“We don’t know what’s normal,” Kraft said.</p><p>“And
that’s where it gets a little murky,” he said. “Is this an emerging
problem? Or is it our perception of it as an issue that is emerging?”</p><p>But
it’s caught the attention of Mantua, who is now reading the work of
scientists such as Balk and Kraft, as well as collaborating with
researchers, such as Don Tillitt — a toxicologist at the U.S. Geological
Survey in Missouri who helped identify the connection between thiamine
and lake trout in the Great Lakes.</p><p>Tillitt
has called for more research, noting, like Kraft and Mantua, that we
can’t know if something is a problem until we understand what is normal.</p><p>Mantua
says he feels like he and other researchers are embarking on a new
paradigm for studying and understanding ecological systems around the
globe.</p><p>“This has pulled me
in different directions and ideas I’d never thought about,” he said.
“We’re now at that point of how do we uncover this story? It’s really
intimidating and exciting.”</p><p>As
for the California salmon, scientists are now waiting to see if the fry
that received the thiamine treatments develop and reproduce normally,
or whether their offspring are damaged irreparably. As for the wild
salmon along the coast, the researchers can only wait and hope.</p>
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