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| Bleeding Growth on Catfish |
Remember this: Follow the water.
It was
morning. I found myself standing on a bank doing specimen fishing. I put the
fish in the water. I want to make sure they are healthy.
I was buzzed by something that turned out to be a
hummingbird. Another great win for habitat building. Something was stealing my
crickets off the hook. I got a hit. I am confounded by the fact when a
catfish hits your line, the fish can feel heavier than a regular exercise
weight. It becomes heavier because it is dangling from a string attached to a
vicariously, but yet sturdy black bream pole. It might be my wanting the fish
to be huge. I pulled the catfish up on the bank. I realized my line had come
off the bent hook. I picked up the catfish to see a bleeding growth protruding
near its dorsal fin. I thought about not putting the catfish back in the water.
I decided to toss it into the other side in case I could find someone who
wanted a live diseased fish to study. I caught another catfish with no apparent
skin problems. These catfish did not originate from this body of water.
On
another adventure previous to this day, I caught a catfish in a major waterway system by a place that pumps water to another location in another county. This
catfish had a bulbous tumor growing between the pelvic and anal fin. The integument had not ruptured yet. It was the
size of a ping pong ball. Here are two catfish coming from the same place
with questionable meaty growths.
The
protruding growth on the catfish from my habitat was observed to look like
proud flesh.
Proud flesh is an excess of granulation tissue when a wound is
healing. The problem with proud flesh is it will keep building on top of itself
until a big mass is over what use to be a common wound.
I owned a horse that cut his hoof in the coronary ban. This formed
a weird hang nail. This hang nail eventually got caught on something and ripped
lose. Surgery was required but the area began to grow out of control. I was
informed by the veterinarian at the time to apply formaldehyde on my horse's
incision to burn off the proud flesh. I eventually had to have a second surgery
to repair the damage by an equine specialist I was working for at the time. The
problem did not occur again. The equine specialist informed me the first was a
botched attempt at realigning the coronary band, which failed.
I have
also seen bleeding growths in dogs via a radical mastectomy. The growth was
excised then tested to find out it was cancer. Within two days the tumor was
back the size of a melon.
The problem with this train of thought was: a week before I pulled
out a shellcracker hybrid with a mass just like the catfish on its side near
the dorsal fin. I thought maybe it was a fluke, virus, or other parasite. These were fish stock purchases from a farm.
Above this little area of water is elevated farmland. It is
getting hit with farm chemicals religiously. There have been times I would
walk out on the porch to get hit in the face by something a yellow airplane is
spraying on windy days. This causes the chemical to be carried by the winds
instead of land on the intended place at the dose rate. Then it is to be sick
for a week.
There is a two mile stretch of road I run and walk. Near a church,
during hot days, you can smell the stench of chemicals coming out of the
ditches. If you look in the ditch with standing water, the water has that
rainbow effect of the non-soluble residue on top you see when a car is leaking antirfreeze or oil.
I sat at the observing tower thinking.
I thought
on catfish growths and tumors. Tumors indicate a problem with the state of
health and well-being of a creature. I thought on contamination of water and
land sources, watersheds, etc.
I looked around for information.
I was a little put off by the lack of research on this kind of thing.
Chemical causes were the central point of focus in most studies.
I was reading about PAHs being in soil sediment, air, or oily
substances. PAH stands for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. An example of an
air PAH is moth balls.
Catfish lurk near soil sediment in rivers looking for mussels.
Imagine you are driving down the road then have to stop because
the county is asphalting the road. Rain falls several days. That water travels
down through whatever watershed lures it. Along that path, what comes off that
road can build up or move on to a larger body of water. Asphalt is noted to be
a source of PAH.
PAH is also in fossil fuels and creosote. Creosote is a carbonaceous
chemical formed by the distillation of tars, pyrolysis of plant-derived
material such as wood or fossil fuel. This stuff was used as a treatment for
seagoing and wood structures to prevent rot. This could be found in railroad ties and
bridgework.
A long time ago, in this very area, wooden ships were treated with
pitch to make sea-going vessels. There are places where you can go and see
the black stuff leaking into the river from the bank. You just have to know where
to look.
Add in plants being within five miles of the river, digging for
sand and coquina.
The problem with PAH, as I understand it, is PAHs do not degrade. PAHs sit there a long time.
I recall one fisherman telling me to soak my bait in WD-40. Undoubtedly,
catfish have their own form of bio-hazardous crack. I laugh here, but a catfish
could be the equivalent of a drug sniffing dog. He does his business in the
river as a garbage control officer. The only problem is there is no haz-mat
suit for his endeavors. Reminds me of the sad way dogs always lick up anti-freeze. It's irresistible.
When you consider the direction water travels above, through a
watershed and feeds out into a body of water, the concern here is: over a
period of time how much contamination is actually building up in any given
place without efforts to assess locations along the watershed route, as
potential hazards of contaminants and pollutants. Also, without knowledge of
these hotspots can there be anything done about limiting exposure along those
routes in higher than normal volumes that can eventually trickle down to a
bigger body of water and affect the life in that cycle in negative ways, long
and short term.
I had more questions.
I would wonder if the problem is actually coming up from underneath through watersheds where water travels. Documentation I read seems more concerned with the superficial routes of travel.
I would wonder if the problem is actually coming up from underneath through watersheds where water travels. Documentation I read seems more concerned with the superficial routes of travel.
I travelled down to this section of the Santee near the coast at a
boat ramp. I put my foot in the water on the edge. It was greasy and smelled
rank of chemicals. Just touching the river water made me feel unclean and itchy.
It could have been just the natural consistency of the river mud.
Another location I took the boat down had high banks. The banks
were greasy and black. When you touched the bank, it was sticky.
These places were within 200 miles of each other on a map dot.
What starts out as no more than pulling in a catfish becomes a
concern over watershed health, transfer of contaminants over a watershed as it
accumulates on its way to a big body of water, water quality control, factors above
and below ground affecting points on a liquid-land highway, and how these
factors can contribute or affect given species, water, and humans alike. Not to
mention any disruption of sediment by mechanical means near the location of a
river system or its tributaries.
Water should be our concern as well as those pollutants and
contaminants that are flushed out to sea, along with plastic and trash that
do not belong in the drink.
I hope this makes you think. It never hurt anyone to do further
research on the issues of water quality, watershed health, or any program that
could contribute to a strategic opportunity to do some local conservation on
your property. What is happening on your little piece of dirt could be a symptom of something much bigger. It always starts with a cough.
We should be doing more about the health of catfish and their habitats. If it doesn't look healthy, something is wrong. Look into it. Eventually it will spread to other living things.
Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore
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