Return of the Smelts

In the shore villages of Lake Michigan, the good news grew & grew -- the smelts were back. The mysterious malady that all but wiped out the Great Lakes smelts last year was still as great a mystery as ever (TIME, March 6). But a few hardy smelts survived. Last week, for the first time since the winter of 1942-43, they were again being caught in appreciable numbers.

Last year's spring catch was zero. Last week, in streams around Michigan's Green Bay and Huron's Saginaw Bay, with smelts making belated spawning runs, men, women & children dipped up hundreds with their nets. Dr. John Van Oosten of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in charge of investigating the smelt situation, estimated that the normal Great Lakes smelt population (1942 catch: 5,000,000 lb. ) would be restored in four years.

Weeks of patient investigation by Dr.

Van Oosten had served only to eliminate Possible reasons why the fish disappeared.

They did not disappear because of lack of oxygen in the water, weather (the smelts died in both warm and cold water) or air men's practice bombings in the Great Lakes (bombed fish have pulverized livers, of which there was no sign in the dead smelts). Dr. Van Oosten thinks that most likely the fish were killed by bacteria or viruses, but probably no one will ever know.

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