Sorry this is not a comment on this blog but I could not figure out how else to contact you on this. Below is an E-mail/phone message I had sent Karl Scheidegger, I also sent E-maild to Dennis Schenborn and Mike Staggs of the Wisconsin DNR on 11/14/07. I received no reply and have no idea if they had followed through on this. When I read your story in Wisconsin Sportsman about VHS it reminded me about the TV show Nature Shock and E-mails that I sent. I still have not heard anything back on this.

http://fl.biology.usgs.gov/posters/Ecotoxicology/Thiamine_in_Alligators/thiamine_in_alligators.html

http://www.avforums.com/forums/television/703856-nature-shock-zombie-alligators-documentary.html

http://www.locatetv.com/tv/nature-shock/season-1/4211562

Hello Karl,

I left you am message yesterday about a program I had seen on the Animal Planet channel. The show was Saving the Species. On the show they had done a study into why the alligators were dieing off in Florida. They knew that the alligators had something wrong with their immune systems but could not figure out what was causing it. After 6 years of pumping the stomaches of the alligators they found that they were eating a lot of gizzard shad. The gizzard shad were found to contain an enzyme that caused the body of what ever had eaten them to lose or not absorb vitamin B1. Vitamin B1 was crucial to the immune system and the lack of it in their systems allow viruses and other infection to attack the body of what had eaten the shad. Thru the study they had also learned it affected fish and birds as well. There was one demonstration with large mouth bass fingerlings that were dieing and when they had added vitamin B1 to the water the fish were revived in less than 30 seconds. They compared how game fish could not survive as well in the poor water quality caused by algae blooms and the gizzard shad’s ability to survive in the bad water. During that segment you would have thought they were talking about Lake Winnebago. They talked about the smell from the algae die off just like it smells here. My concern is that this is what is happening in the Lake Winnebago chain. My co-workers who spear sturgeon said that there are dead shad always on the bottom of the lake and that all of the sturgeon they have speared that last 8 years have been full of the shad. Please contact the Florida DNR to learn more about this before it’s to late for the Lake Winnebago system.

Larry Janssen
43 Adams Way
Little Chute WI 54140
920-766-9455 ext 262
920-788-9715