D.D.T. Sprays Kill Many Fish In U.S.

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30643, 8 January 1965, Page 1

D.D.T. Sprays Kill Many Fish In U.S.

D.D.T. agricultural sprays were killing thousands of good eating fish in the Mississippi delta, said the president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (Dr C. P. Haskins) in Christchurch yesterday.

“This is a very serious thing,” he said. “Giant catfish, of the type Huckleberry Finn used to catch, are dying by the thousands. As the residue from the D.D.T. drains into the Mississippi basin, the fat tissues of catfish weighing up to 801 b are being infected.” The fish, Dr. Haskins said, died about eight months later, when food for them was scarce. At this time, in the colder weather, the fish normally lived off their own fat supplies. But when this fat had become D.D.T. infected, the fish inevitably died. Both hormone sprays and D.D.T. sprays, said Dr. Haskins, were a real problem in the United States.

Dr. Haskins yesterday left by air for America after three weeks’ holiday in the South Island. He spent much of, his time at Milford and Stewart Island pursuing his hobbyphotographing birds with a 16 mm. movie colour camera. He was accompanied by Mrs Haskins. Dr. Haskins said that the Carnegie Institution, a research organisation in the natural sciences, was not carrying out research on fish killed by D.D.T. sprays.

But the Haskins Laboratories in New York, which he started, were carrying out research into the “red tide,”

an organism in the inner coastal waters of Florida that killed millions of fish. The _ organism remained latent in the still, swampy waterways of the Florida coast. When it was flushed out by floods and certain conditions prevailed, the “red tide” covered many miles along the coast like a giant red stain on the water. “Millions of fish die as far as the eye can see,” he said. “It creates a great health hazard.” In Christchurch Dr. Haskins was the guest for a day of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canterbury (Dr. L. L. Pownall).