Florida Times-Union
Friday, July 24, 1998
Story last updated at 12:03 a.m. on Friday, July 24, 1998
Sick fish
St. Johns will be tested for microbes
By Steve Patterson
Times-Union staff writer
Florida health officials will begin studying whether people can
get sick from a microorganism found in the St. Johns River and
other waterways.
A Maryland doctor said he recently traveled to Martin County and
examined five people who had symptoms similar to Maryland fishermen
exposed to fish that had developed ulcerlike sores last year.
No cases have been reported in Jacksonville, and no medical research
is planned in Northeast Florida.
The symptoms included clouded thinking, stomach pain and diarrhea,
coughs and sensitivity to light, said Ritchie Shoemaker, who said
he thought the patients in Maryland and Florida were exposed to
two different members of a family of microbes called dinoflagellates.
Starting next month, researchers will study a handful of people who work around the St. Lucie River, an area about 95 miles north of Miami where a dinoflagellate called cryptoperidiniopsis has been found. Their health will be compared against people from two rivers that don't have the microorganism, said Alan Rowan, an epidemiologist with Florida's
Department of Health.
Rowan said scientists have no evidence linking health problems
to either cryptoperidiniopsis or another newly discovered microbe,
nicknamed Lucie.
Scientists first identified cryptoperidiniopsis in the St. Johns
last summer, while examining water samples taken from Jacksonville's
Talleyrand area. Small numbers of fish with lesions had been spotted
in the river. The organism was spotted this year in the St. Lucie,
where thousands of sick or dead fish appeared.
Researchers have found the same organism while studying large fish kills in Maryland and North Carolina. However, those fish were thought to have been harmed by Pifesteria piscicida, a kind of cousin microorganism. Lucie, a third dinoflagellate which has not received a formal scientific
name, was found recently in the St. Lucie.
In addition to the St. Lucie, researchers will study people who
work around the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers and an undetermined
river in northwest Florida, Rowan said.
He said the Caloosahatchee was picked because it has had sick
or dying fish but no evidence of cryptoperidiniopsis. The third
river will be one with no sick fish and no harmful dinoflagellates.
Rowan said he expected the study to examine about 30 state employees
- 10 on each river - whose jobs involve working in and around
water. He said the study should be finished within a few months.
He said researchers want information about any people who think
they've become sick from contact with diseased fish. He said people
should call their county health offices.
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