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From the High Desert

A Cultural History of Art Bell

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Thumbnail for April 7, 1997: & the Waters Turned to Blood - Rodney Barker

April 7, 1997: & the Waters Turned to Blood - Rodney Barker

Apr 7, 1997
1h 52m
Rodney Barker
0:00 / 0:00
Investigative author Rodney Barker joins Art Bell to discuss his alarming book about Pfiesteria piscicida, a shape-shifting microorganism discovered in the coastal waters of North Carolina that has killed tens of millions of fish and poses a growing threat to human health. Barker details how aquatic botanist Dr. JoAnn Burkholder identified this ancient organism, dormant for possibly millions of years in river sediment, now activated by agricultural runoff and industrial pollution.

The organism releases a powerful neurotoxin that becomes airborne, causing open sores, cognitive impairment, immune suppression, and memory loss in exposed humans. In laboratory experiments, it was observed swarming around human blood cells and consuming their contents. Barker reveals that 110 North Carolina physicians wrote to Vice President Gore pleading for federal intervention, while state bureaucrats continued to downplay the crisis to protect the tourism and fishing industries.

Callers from North Carolina and surrounding states confirm encounters with mysterious fish kills, unexplained illness, and official silence. Art Bell connects the ecological disaster to the broader theme of environmental reckoning explored in his own book, The Quickening, painting a picture of a coastline in quiet crisis.

Key Moments

  1. 40 million fish dead in NC estuaries - 'the cell from hell': Barker recounts arriving in North Carolina in fall 1995 to fish, cancelling because ~40 million fish had died across that summer's estuary kills, and learning at a state meeting about the shape-changing dinoflagellate nicknamed 'the cell from hell.'

  2. Burkholder, the lab assistant, and aerosolized neurotoxin: Barker introduces Dr. JoAnne Burkholder of NC State, who tracked the organism from her lab tanks to the estuaries; she and her lab assistant developed insidious symptoms initially mistaken for premature Alzheimer's, MS, or Parkinson's because the toxin aerosolizes.

  3. Hog farms and tobacco runoff as the trigger: Barker explains that decades of pesticide runoff from NC tobacco farms, combined with the state courting the swine industry to make NC #2 behind Iowa in hog production with lax environmental laws, created the toxic-soup conditions that woke the organism.

  4. The species name: Pfiesteria piscicida: Barker gives the scientific name - Pfiesteria piscicida, Latin for 'fish killer' - and notes Burkholder has now found the organism from Delaware's Chesapeake Bay aquaculture die-off down through South Carolina, Georgia, around Florida to Mobile Bay, Alabama.

  5. Fish AIDS and human immune-system suppression: Barker says ten researchers across six different labs have suffered the symptom range; in fish the organism so suppresses the immune system they call it 'fish AIDS,' and chronically exposed humans show suppression patterns 'not dissimilar from HIV patients.'