Word: trouts
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This much is known: the disease is carried by a microscopic protozoan called Myxobolus cerebralis, whose spores are released when infected fish die. These spores are not in themselves harmful to trout. It is only after they have been ingested by inch-long Tubifex worms in the mud that the parasites become dangerous. In the worm's gut, the protozoan takes a new form: grappling-hook-shaped spore cases that when released from the worm, can invade the gills and skin of tiny rainbow fry. The infection eats away at the cartilage of young trout, leaving them deformed, discolored...
...ailment was first detected in Pennsylvania in 1958--imported, scientists believe, in a shipment of trout fillets from Denmark--and has since turned up in 20 other states. Not all trout are susceptible. Brown trout show signs of infection but seem to be weathering it, and fishing for browns is still good in most streams. For some reason the rainbows of the Rockies, which breed in cold mountain water and create the wild-trout populations so valued by anglers, are especially vulnerable...
Fishermen themselves may have helped spread the disease. More than 80% of the trout caught in Colorado come from hatcheries, and although many of the state's hatcheries are known to be infected, the Division of Wildlife continues to pour its fish into Colorado streams to help maintain what it calls the angler-satisfaction rate. Montana, however, does not stock its streams; authorities suspect the Madison may have become infested when some angler unwittingly dumped infected rainbows into it. The spores can also be carried from stream to stream by boats, outboard motors and even mud on the soles...
Scientists are desperately searching for solutions. They are perfecting DNA tests that will allow faster identification of the parasite and are searching for a trout species that is immune to the disease and could provide a substitute for the rainbow. Meanwhile, the Montana-based Whirling Disease Foundation, which is helping to coordinate the fight, has landed a big-name supporter in TV mogul (and part-time Montanan) Ted Turner. For streams like the Colorado and the Madison, where the wild-rainbow population is in free fall, the hope is that it may not be too late...
RICHARD WOODBURY, TIME's Denver bureau chief, flew to Bozeman, Montana, last week to report on the mysterious parasite that is killing off the Rocky Mountain West's famous wild rainbow trout. In the past two years, Woodbury has ranged all over the Rockies--from New Mexico to Wyoming--documenting life in what is now called the New West but which Woodbury remembers less grandly from reporting a 1980 cover story about the region's last big boom. "The difference now is that every facet of the growth explosion is much larger," he says. "The mountain states are choking...