Fish and Wildlife Disease Investigation and Surveillance

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Eastern Ecological Science Center is home to the Northeast Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (NEARMI), one of 7 ARMI regions across the United States. NEARMI works on public lands in thirteen states from Maine to Virginia, including many National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges.

A USGS multi-disciplinary team will use laboratory and modeling approaches to investigate the cause of stony coral tissue loss disease.

This project focuses on understanding the forces driving the risk of avian influenza transmission from wild waterfowl to domestic poultry within the Chesapeake Bay region.

This project focuses on improving our understanding of how current and previous infection with avian influenza viruses impact the movement ecology of wild waterfowl species.

There is a growing and urgent need to develop and implement innovative strategies to research, monitor, and manage freshwater resources as societal demands escalate simultaneously with climate-driven changes in water availability.

Issue The USGS has a long-term research effort that identified endocrine disruption in smallmouth bass (SMB) in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Endocrine disruption can cause many changes in fish, including intersex characteristics where fish develop characteristics of the other sex, such as immature eggs forming in males. An overview by USGS of endocrine disruption in fish found the condition...

Issue Partners in the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) are implementing best management practices (BMPs) to prevent nutrient and sediment from entering waterways across the Chesapeake watershed and reduce loads to the Bay. In addition to reducing nutrients, CBP partners want to better understand how BMPs can provide additional benefits for addressing toxic contaminants, such as pesticides, hormones...

The Disease Decision Analysis and Research group is a multi-disciplinary team based out of the Eastern Ecological Science Center whose strengths are in ecology, decision sciences and quantitative modeling.

Below are journal articles about fish and aquatic animal health from the Eastern Ecological Science Center published in 2021 and 2022.

USGS researchers are working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to optimize autonomous, robotic samplers for detection of DNA fragments shed by biological threats (BT; invasive species, parasites, pathogens) in our nation’s waters. Finding DNA fragments (a method known as environmental DNA sampling) produced by an emerging BT in water is akin to finding a needle in a haystack—many...

Southeast Asia has long been the epicenter of AIV emergence. However, as demonstrated by H5NX, these viruses can quickly reach global spread and have significant impacts on poultry production and human health. We have two ongoing efforts funded by the National Science Foundation to help improve our understanding of AIV emergence, spread, and transmission in today’s rapidly changing landscape.

Dietary analyses, health, and reproduction of blue catfish in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay inform ecosystem impacts and mitigation strategies for this aquatic nuisance species.