RD, I went for a nice long run so that I would be in a good place to respond to your gator posts. It just comes down to sloppy conjecture. You have a die off in a lake that is first attributed to a blue-green algae bloom. Problem solved. Yet, a few years later someone notices that the symptoms also look like thiamin deficiency. So some gators are captured and fed exclusively shad three times a day for up to ten months and they come down with beriberi. No one is disputing that thiaminase will degrade B1 in dead flesh if it is present unless cooked. So you feed gators ten months a thiamin deficient diet and you document that they indeed become thiamin deficient over time. Does that explain the gator loss? I doubt it since there are still gators and shad in the same ecosystem and the phenomena has not repeated itself. Further, thiamin levels in the wild gators are normal. Why just this lake? Why don't we see this pattern elsewhere? Surely gators and shad exist in other bodies of water. For all we know someone pulled up with a tanker of toxic chemicals and dumped it into the lake. I just don't know, and neither does anyone else. Sounds like someone was riding the money grant train for six years. Sometimes RD the absence of a countervailing argument is pretty strong proof. You haven't found a citation that documents any species of warm-water fish that suffers thiamin deficiency because of consuming thiaminase containing fish. Since thiaminase has been around for who knows how many millions of years, and the fish kingdom has somehow muddled on despite it, it seems likely that fish are able to absorb enough thiamin into their bloodstream prior to its deactivation in the gut if the prey is eaten fresh. As the USGS scientist said to me "It's all an issue of timing".
On the bright side, at least you stopped calling feeders fatty. You don't need a degree RD. Just common sense.
Rich
