Virulent Fish Virus Found for First Time in Lake Superior

http://www.macroevolution.net/vhsv.html

Summary
The discovery of VHSV, or Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus, in Lake Superior fish species, threatens their population and the industry behind them. It's a hemorrhagic virus that causes internal bleeding to its victims. Fortunately, even though it's in the same family as rabies, it isn't harmful to humans. The disease has already done damage to the agricultural industry of Europe and Japan, so Federal and State agencies placed restrictions on transportation of fish. But, supposedly a pathogen can spread the virus as well and it has already taken large mortalities of wild fish. It poses potential impacts on commercial aquaculture and may disrupt interstate and international trades.

Opinion
The entire time I read this article, i had the mental image of fish getting Ebola. Internal bleeding doesn't sound like a fun way to die, as if dying is fun. But, the issue isn't that. Our state shouldn't be directly effected, but we're all going to pay somehow for this. If the virus becomes a pandemic for fish then it could threaten our economy even further. No one ever realizes how important the fishing industry is to our economy, but the oil spill alone could cause millions of dollars of damage. I'm interested to see how this issue will progress.

Brittany Burns