DNR Searches for Fish in Dunkard Creek
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
20 July 2010
By Ben Adducchio
The Division of Natural Resources is back at Dunkard Creek this week,
searching for fish that may have survived last year’s fish kill, or
came into the stream after the incident.
A more recent fish kill still has investigators puzzled.
Along Dunkard Creek, a stream in Monongalia County, the water is
flowing very silently, quietly and everything is peaceful.
But last September, thousands of fish were found dead on the creek
banks.
The stream’s entire mussel population was also wiped out.
The Division of Natural Resources is starting a four day search of the
creek.
They’re going into different areas of the creek along different points,
looking for fish, and trying to count them to discover and assess how
the stream’s mussel and fish population has changed over the last year.
Frank Jernejcic is a biologist with the Division of Natural Resources.
“Mainly, right now we would like to see what fish have reproduced,
because I’ve noticed a lot of really small fish, which indicates some
reproduction from the fish that did survive,” Jernejcic said.
“We will also have fish that will have moved into this main stem from
the tributaries.”
The DNR will sample at 12 sites along Dunkard Creek and its tributaries
this week.
One place they plan to visit is the North Fork of the West Virginia
Fork of Dunkard.
This is the site where earlier this month, another fish kill occurred,
killing 6,000 to 7,000 fish.
Jernejcic says he thinks a chemical was involved.
“There is no mining or gas well activity that is obvious in the area,”
Jernejcic said.
“It’s fairly obvious that it was a matter of some pollutant being
discharged, of which we can’t prove.”
Kathy Cosco is the communications director for the state Department of
Environmental Protection.
She says the DEP has found no evidence that a chemical was involved in
the latest kill.
She also doesn’t believe mining discharges or gas well drilling
operations were involved.
“Now, not having any evidence, not having any witnesses of what might
have happened, you can’t categorically across the board say that no
industrial activity had any impact on this,” she said, “because there’s
always the possibility out there that somebody did something they
shouldn’t have, but we don’t have any evidence of any of that.”
The DEP concluded a golden algae bloom killed the fish in Dunkard Creek
last September.
Frank Jernejcic says the DNR will not sample for golden algae this week.
DNR biologists are looking in the rapids and in the deeper pools.
“The method we use is called the West Virginia Parallel Wire Method,”
said Dan Cincotta, a DNR biologist.
The method uses wires powered by a generator to produce an electric
current that stuns the fish and bring them to the surface.
They are collected in nets and put in buckets.
The DNR is able to count them, measure them, and determine the species.
But Cincotta says sometimes this isn’t easy.
“The small ones we may have to keep because it’s very difficult to
identify them in the field and a lot of them might die if we handle
them anyway,” he said.
“But the larger fish we keep alive, and on a hot day like this, we
might have to stop several times to work them up.”
The data being collected by the DNR will be used for a research paper
on Dunkard Creek.
The information will also be shared at an American Fisheries Society
meeting later this year.