Right before spring break, many students noticed an unusual sight in the road in front of Knollcrest Dining Hall: several large fish had been dumped on top of a storm drain. Throughout that week, the fish were moved to several different places, appearing on the lawn in front of Knollcrest and the walkway in front of the Nordewier VanderWerp residence hall (NVW).
Annabella Terpstra, a sophomore secondary English education major, said that she first saw the fish on Feb. 24, the day after one of her friends had told her about seeing a dead fish near Knollcrest. “We were walking back from getting lunch on like a normal Tuesday/Thursday,” Terpstra said. “We walked past the grate where they were, and I said like, ‘There’s one fish there.’ And then we got closer and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s actually six fish.’”
Terpstra said that she was “very surprised, quite disgusted. It looked like one of them had almost been run over by a car … Also [I] thought it was a little bit funny because that doesn’t make any sense at all, why there would just be like fish in the grate, in the road, on campus.”
William Miller, assistant professor of biology and certified wildlife biologist, initially thought this incident may have been caused by a phenomenon known as “winter fish kill.” “Winter fish kill is a pretty common occurrence within Michigan, particularly during the spring thaw season,” Miller said. “Essentially, what can happen is, during the freeze-thaw cycle of ponds, certain conditions can change, both direct freezing as well as changes to things like the amount of oxygen in the water … that can cause fish to periodically die off.”
However, upon seeing images of the fish, Miller noted that there was likely something else going on. He said that the fish were “either a pike or a pickerel,” which aren’t known to live in the ponds on Calvin’s campus. “They tend to like larger water bodies,” Miller explained. “That makes me think that it’s not winter fish kill since it’s not from one of our more local water bodies.”
Miller also said that pike and pickerel are both common types of sports fish. “They’re found in Michigan. They’re fairly common in larger waterways, ponds, rivers … it’s just that I don’t have a record of them on campus,” he said. “Probably it was humans just piling fish that they needed to get rid of somewhere.”
From there, the fish probably ended up on campus through “some kind of scavenger that was interacting with them over time,” he said.
Elizabeth Karnes, a freshman elementary education major, noticed the fish on Feb. 27. She said that she first saw pictures of the fish online, and then later encountered one by the NVW. “It looked like it had been like eaten up. Which I’m like, there’s no way the squirrels ate it, but I swear I saw squirrels circling,” she said.
Karnes noted that she saw the fish “at the tail end … I think they were getting picked up, thrown away or whatever … [I] don’t think I saw it again after that.” Given that the fish were there for several days, from around Feb. 23 to Feb. 27, Terpstra expressed concern that “this seems like kind of a sanitary issue.”
However, Miller said that any potential health hazards are minimal. “As things decay, obviously there’s the effect of bacteria that will be around that are actually causing the decay to happen,” he said. “I don’t think there would be a particular hazard to people. You certainly wouldn’t want to eat them … But just handling them? Probably not a big concern.”
Miller’s biggest concern was the potential impact on Calvin’s ecosystem. “If a fish is sick and it has a disease that another fish can catch, moving it into another waterway where it can get into that pond may be a concern.” However, while it’s certainly a possibility, Miller said that in this case, it’s something he’s “not super concerned about.”
While the health and environmental effects of this incident aren’t particularly severe, there are still other problems that can be caused by dumping fish on the road. Miller said it “can attract things like pests and scavengers to an area, things that people may not necessarily want to interact with.”
Miller said he wanted to caution students that “fish are strong predators” toward smaller animals. “If they were to get into some of the sensitive wetland ecosystems that we have over in the ecosystem preserve, that can cause major downward pressure on populations of, say, pond-breeding amphibians that are quite common over there,” said Miller. Because of this, Miller encourages students not to move fish into ponds on campus and to make sure they properly dispose of fish parts.
Students should check the waste disposal policies for their dorm and Calvin’s facilities department to ensure proper on-campus disposal before throwing out any fish.
