worm parasites on the klamath 081011

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Aug 9, 2011 Worm polychaete parasite on the Klamath

Don Meamber did an excellent job digging these papers out of his email collection. I am particularly interested in the silt effects on enhancement and spread of habitat for the polychaete. I have hypothesized for more than a year now that the expanding habitat for the worm is due to sediments released by California Department of Fish and Game's removal of flashboard irrigation dams on the Shasta River, thus the concentration of habitat below where the Shasta River enters the Klamath River. I suggest the an expanded problem would arise with dams' removal on the Klamath River.

I would suggest this be added to both pienpolitics.com and Klamath Basin in Crisis websites.

Regards, John and Jennifer Menke

HERE for biography of John Menke, PhD

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: DON MEAMBER
To: John Menke
Sent: Tuesday, August 9, 2011 3:47 PM
Subject: Polychaete control

Here are a couple articles I had saved about Polychaetes, but probably not what you would call scientific proof, just the opinions of scientists from what they observed.

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_14746435

From the above article:

"Sascha Hallett, a researcher with Oregon State University, said that there is more silty material that the worm inhabits, and with it more young fish have been killed by the parasite over the past three years. Hallett said that situation will probably become more problematic until heavy river flows strip some of that habitat away".

And then there is this publication:

http://www.northcoastjournal.com/020807/news0208.html

From the above are some important statements on the subject:

"But it wasn't until 1997 that microbiologist Jerri Bartholomew, of OSU's Center for Fish Disease Research, and her team of researchers discovered that C. shasta requires the polychaete worm, in addition to the salmon, to complete its life cycle".

"The only time there was little to no mortality among the test fish below the dam was during the wet year 2005-2006, which Stocking said suggests perhaps high spring flows flushed the parasite spores -- and/or the worms -- out of the hotspots where they were in abundance".

Maybe flows below the dam could be manipulated -- perhaps with a high spring pulse. Or, maybe, somehow, the polychaete hosts could be "dried out" in the hotspots -- they seem to fare poorly in very low flows.

DON