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| FishTails |
River Level Impacting Aquatic Life
[January 27, 2005 - wvmetronews.com - Staff - Parkersburg]
Biologist from the West Virginia DNR are fearful that the historically low water levels on the Bellville Pool of
the Ohio River could have a major adverse impact on aquatic life.
The river is dropped as crews from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to work toward the removal of four
sunken barges that wrapped themselves around the Bellville Dam during the height of a flood earlier this month.
The water levels are now at their lowest point, potentially in history, and certainly since the navigational lock
and dam systems were installed on the waterway dividing West Virginia and Ohio.
Chris O'Bara is the DNR's Ohio River Biologist and says the impact has the potential to be disastrous in the Bellville
Pool, but so far, it's hard bad it will be.
"Right now the embayments are iced over with the remaining water and there's snow on top of that, so there's
no way we can really look at those and get a definitive evaluation of how many fish have been killed."
O'Bara tells MetroNews that some fish have been observed dead in some of the embayments, many of which are now
dewatered and cut off from the main river channel. The impact has left some of those backwater areas as isolated,
standing water ponds and some completely dry.
Research by the DNR has shown that typically during the winter, fish gather at the mouths of tributaries and embayments
to escape the swifter waters of the main channel. However, in an ironic twist the flooding that caused the barges
to break free and slam into the dam may have also driven those fish further up into the tributaries.
"Kind of a unique situation where we had a flood one weekend and the next weekend we had some of the lowest
levels in the history of the river." Says O'Bara. "We fear it may have driven those fish into the embayments,
many of which are now dewatered."
The situation may serve as a double-edged sword and comes at a time the DNR is working on a fisheries management
plan for the Ohio River. O'Bara says the low levels are exposing the river bottom for the first time and will provide
a rare opportunity to actually see the fisheries habitat.
"One of our plans is to go out and fly the entire system and be able to actually look at the habitat, take
pictures of it, create computerized maps and have that information for analysis."
Habitat has been identified as one of the biggest reasons fish populations on the river have dropped in recent
years. O'Bara is hoping data gleaned from that aerial surveillance will enable them to know what steps to take
to restore that habitat on the entire lengthy of the waterway.
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