Research identifies sick red snapper

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. (WALA) - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a warning to people fishing in the gulf: if you catch red snapper with lesions or discolored skin, toss it out.

LSU researcher James Cowan has found many red snapper that are sick. The samples he's found have bacteria that could be dangerous if handled by humans.

He said it’s a possibility this could be connected to the oil spill, but he's still conducting his research.

Cowan and his team fished off the waters of Alabama recently, and he said in the reefs he visited, roughly 10 percent of the fish he found were infected with two pathogens.

"We caught sick fish at every reef we sampled at," said Cowan.

Cowan said the fish samples he found have two pathogens that could cause humans to get sick: vibrio vulnificus and photobacterium damselae.

He said vibrio vulnificus causes the same reaction to eating bad raw oysters: diarrhea and abdominal pains. Cowan also said if fishermen have wounds or cuts on their hands as they handle these fish, they could get terrible infections, or in some cases, it could be lethal.

"Right now, it seems to be centered off the coast of Alabama," said Cowan, "but to be honest with you, there hasn't been a survey that's really looked at anywhere else."

Cowan used underwater cameras to observe some of the sick fish, and he said they were behaving erratically.

“They didn’t appear to be behaving normally. They were standoffish. They were less gregarious than the healthy fish,” said Cowan.

Dr. Crozier at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab has been doing studies on the red snapper himself.

"We have sampled thousands of snapper without any of the lesions," said Crozier.

Crozier said so many fish congregate together that if one gets sick, it could pass the disease along to others.

“There are so many snapper out there now that it’s like a herd of cattle on every reef, and they have a high site fidelity, which means they don’t wander. So you’ve got this high density of animals, so if one gets sick and gets a parasite or some kind of disease, it spreads rather easily,” said Dr. Crozier.

Cowan said his samples have been found in the same areas where the oil traveled.

“Where the fish were coming from was very highly spatially correlated to where a lot of the oil traveled after it left the site of the Macondo spill,” said Cowan.

He said it's possible these illnesses could be connected to submerged oil or dispersants, but he needs to do more research.

"If I was a betting man, I would say that it's an indirect effect of the spill, but I have no proof of that at this time,” said Cowan.

Cowan said he took samples of healthy fish, and in some of those cases he found badly diseased livers.

Both Professor Cowan and Dr. Crozier are going to do more studies and research around the area.