The Great Smelt Mystery

"The greatest catastrophe in fishing history!"

The incredible Great Lakes smelt situation was so described last week by Dr. John Van Oosten of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The vast smelt population of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron (where some 95% of U.S. fresh water smelts lived) had suddenly vanished. Two years ago fishermen took 5,000,000 Ib. of smelts there; last year, 1,000,000. Total catch this winter: 2 Ib. No one knew why the smelts had died.

Originally from Maine fresh-water lakes, the smelts were transplanted to Michigan's Crystal Lake in 1912 as food for salmon. The salmon unaccountably disappeared, but the smelts thrived, soon spread through the Great Lakes. In Huron and Michigan fishermen dipping for bigger fish found them a nuisance. Developed into a popular table delicacy, the silver smelts became a big industry in the past decade; prices jumped from 1/2 to 4-c- a Ib. This year OPA had counted on smelts for 10,000,000 Ib. of food.

In Green Bay, off northern Michigan, where smelts grew thickest, fishermen caught them through holes in the ice in winter, dipped them out of streams with nets when they swam upstream to spawn in spring. A terrific breeder (the female casts more than 20,000 eggs), the smelt fed on insect larvae, other fish and sometimes its own young. Green Bay fishermen began to notice something wrong last winter, when dead smelts popped up through their fishing holes in the ice. By spring great shoals of dead fish were being washed ashore and the lake bottoms were carpeted with them. The unknown malady spread rapidly northward through Huron and Michigan, but apparently left untouched the smaller smelt populations of Erie, Ontario and Superior.

Pathologists could find no clue to the disease; there seemed to be nothing wrong with the fish anatomically (a diseased fish usually shows ruptures or lesions). Said Dr. Van Oosten: "I am completely at a loss. The fish died regardless of sex, age, size, spawning condition or anything else." Last week Dr. Van Oosten hastened to Crystal Lake, where the smelts still seemed healthy, to fish and analyze further.

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