A Hospital for Fish

Fish get sick, just like people. Insects, bacteria, and submicroscopic viruses produce a variety of underwater ailments that cause more than $1,000,000 losses in America's 650 hatcheries every year. For all that, there is only one fish hospital--a five-year-old institution run by the United States Bureau of Fisheries, with two laboratories in Seattle and one in Quilcene, Wash., more than 20 miles away.

Last week Dr. F. F. Fish, aquatic biologist and head of the Washington research stations, announced expansion of that hospital: completion of a new section in which sick fish will be watched under carefully controlled conditions and amid apparatus that will keep water at any temperature from freezing to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dr. Fish gets fish patients from largescale hatcheries all over the country. The fish are brought alive if they come from near-by waters; otherwise they are received in a pickled state for postmortems. The most seriously ill are put under strict quarantine at the Quilcene laboratory, and when Dr. Fish and his assistant, R. R. Rucker, have diagnosed each case, they send reports back to the owners.

The Seattle institution also has a special way of studying homemade epidemics. Six isolated water-filled troughs are used, each of which contains 500 fish. Two troughs contain batches of healthy fish; two hold experimentally infected and untreated animals; and two are packed with sick fish that have been treated. By comparing death rates in the troughs, Dr. Fish can gauge the value of a disease-curbing treatment.

Among the more common diseases is infection of the gills, which is treated by dunking fish in special chemical baths. The most dangerous disease is a form of blood poisoning similar to that which produces boils on human skin. Since there is no treatment for this malady, it is sometimes necessary to clear out an entire hatchery after an epidemic and then go through a painstaking process of restocking. About 30 per cent of all disease-stricken fish die.

Although some persons have brought their pet goldfish to the clinic, its purpose isn't to perform individual cures but to solve the problems of hatcheries. Dr. Fish commented briefly on this: "Diseased fish are brought in purely for observation. They are not expected to leave under their own power."