Copyright 1998 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.
The Palm Beach Post
April 26, 1998, Sunday, MARTIN-ST. LUCIE EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 665 words
HEADLINE: DOUBTERS NOW BELIEVE FISHERMAN
BYLINE: Sally D. Swartz, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: STUART
BODY:
Like a piscatorial Paul Revere, Walter Kandrashoff tried to
warn people >about sick fish. He waited 30 years for them to
hear him.
The fish have sores, he said, providing pictures to politicians.
The fish have dips in their spines shaped like saddles, he said,
showing scientists his frozen specimens. Oddly shaped scales are
growing backward on fish, he wrote newspaper editors.
Since the epidemic of diseased fish - 28 species found with
sores and lesions in the St. Lucie and Indian Rivers since early
March - everyone is listening to Kandrashoff now.
Kandrashoff and Thom Day, head of Day Cancer Research Foundation,
were at Florida Oceanographic Society Saturday to provide people
with hope in the sick fish situation, a demonstration showing
diseased fish can heal in clean >water.
Kandrashoff, 77, a Port Salerno resident, has caught, catalogued,
photographed and frozen sick fish for years, first in Miami and
since 1990 in Martin County waters.
''I tried to tell people about the pollution,'' Kandrashoff
said. ''These fish cannot take the poisons we're throwing at them.
But, I don't think people were ready for me until now.''
Kandrashoff applauds El Nio for filling Lake Okeechobee to
overflowing, forcing water managers to release huge amounts of
fresh water into the partly salty rivers.
''It helped people see what's going on,'' he said.
The fresh water, laden with pollutants and sediment, may have
precipitated the epidemic of fish with lesions and the discovery
of a toxic micro-algae, Cryptoperidiniopsis, in local rivers.
Scientists believe Crypto may weaken fishes' protective slime
coat, allowing harmful bacteria to attack.
Kandrashoff, in fact, collected the water samples in which
state Department of Environmental Protection scientists first
identified Crypto here. He and >his son, Michael, 31, go fishing
once or twice a week.
If they catch a sick or deformed fish, they note the species,
date, where they caught it and what's wrong with it. Then they
freeze it for Joan >Browder, a scientist with National Marine
Fisheries Service based in Miami.
Browder is one of several scientists who have gone into partnership
with Kandrashoff to write papers about the various gruesome things
he's found wrong with fish. The scale disorientation problem is
named Kandrashoff's syndrome, since he was first to find it.
Kandrashoff wears gloves when he handles sick fish. He still
eats healthy fish and those with the wrong-way scales. He won't
eat the others. They're in his freezer, a little shop of horrors:
a remora with its suckers half >rotted, a croaker with a lesion
and rotted spots, a Spanish mackerel with scale disorientation,
a spot tail with bleeding sores.
Day, a St. Louis resident who started a cancer foundation in
1993 after his parents died of cancer in Stuart, heard of Kandrashoff's
work and became involved.
''Walter and Michael are the experts,'' Day said. ''They don't
have Ph.D.s, but they sure know their stuff.''
Day went fishing with them. He shot pictures, sent samples
of fish >tumors to out-of-state labs for testing and wrote
a report on fish cancers that he >sent to local and state politicians.
Day believes pesticides and other pollutants are causing cancers
in plants, fish and people. But he has been more interested in
focusing on solutions, he said.
Kandrashoff left a sick fish in a barrel of clean water by
accident - and discovered it began to heal quickly. Day later
sponsored a project at House of Refuge Museum that he said proved
sick fish can heal themselves within 72 hours in clean water.
Day is excited about demonstrating the get-well-quick project
at Florida Oceanographic Society, and said the Discovery channel
plans to film it. Clean water allows the fish's immune system
to rebound, he said.
''So much bad news is coming at people. But there are answers,
and if we >just work together, we'll solve the problems,"
Day said. "The fish are teaching us what needs to be done.''
NOTES: Also ran South
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (B&W), JASON NUTTLE/Staff Photographer, Fisherman
Walter Kandrashoff (left) shows a fish with a lesion to (from
right) Jim McCord, Michael Kandrashoff, Frank McDonald and an
unidentified cameraman Saturday at the Florida Oceanographic Society.
Walter Kandrashoff has been tracking sick fish for 30 years.
LOAD-DATE: April 30, 1998