Fish kills: what’s the cause?

Whenever the local media reports on a fish kill there always seems to be a part story that is not being reported especially in follow up stories. That missing part is one of the five W’s of journalism - What? What is causing trout and other fish in our streams to die off year after year. The answer to that, in my opinion, is two fold (1) continuing poor stewardship of the land that is still being practiced today, (2) pesticides.

According to the provincial governments own website there has been 58 documented fish kills on P.E.I. since 1962. On their website each fish kill has three columns date of fish kill, the river involved, and the pesticide that was the probable cause.

Since the July 2002 fish kill in North River the one chemical that has been identified in every fish kill is chlorothalonil, a pesticide that is in use on just about every potato field on P.E.I.

Due to length restrictions on letters to the editor I’m not going to even try to list all the information available, but some of the highlights according to Wikipedia; (1) chlorothalonil is found to be an important factor in the decline of the honey bee population by making them more vulnerable to the gut parasite nosema cerance (2) chlorothalonil is highly toxic to fish and other aquatic invertebrate.

Does anyone want to place a small wager on what’s going to cause the next fish kill? What is it going to take before this provincial government gets off their collective asses and starts looking out for our rivers and streams instead of allowing “Big Potato” to poison them time and time again?

If things keep going the way they are, I can see myself driving to New Brunswick to fish for trout in the not to distant future.

John E. Clow,

Summerside