GBH Daily: What the carp?
☀️ Sunny and hot, with highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 8:16 p.m.
They’re slimy. They’re stinky. They’re dead and floating on the Charles River.
If you’ve seen the slightly apocalyptic-looking sight of carp belly-up on the Charles then Jason Stolarski, an aquatic biologist and the fish kill coordinator for MassWildlife, wants you to know that you should not be too worried about it.
The fish — and I will try to put this delicately — died after doing what they love.
In the spawning season a few weeks ago, their defenses were lowered physiologically, and something tore through the invasive species — the record-breaking heat wave, or disease, likely did them in.
“They’re very active when they spawn, so they expend a lot of energy. They’re also releasing eggs and sperm into the water, and it costs energy to create those reproductive products,” Stolarski told GBH’s Hannah Reale. “By the end of this activity, when they’ve all spawned, they’re just gassed, right?”
Marielena Lima of the Charles River Watershed Association, said it is unusual to see so many dead fish this early in the season. “It’s such an early fish kill. Usually it happens later down in the summer when it’s really hot,” she told Reale. “But we’ve been in a drought for months now, so I think it’s just kind of all these compounding effects on fish in our watershed.”
Her advice: If you see a dead fish, “definitely don’t touch it.” In other words: carpe diem, but don’t carpe carp.
Four Things to Know
1. The number of people migrating to Massachusetts from other countries fell by more than half in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new report from Boston Indicators and MassINC. That means a lot for the local labor market, said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators: immigrants make up significant shares of both low-wage jobs, like nursing home workers and home health aides. They also play large roles in local colleges and universities.
“Immigrants have been critical to fueling our innovation economy and institutions of higher-ed,” Schuster said. “We have a disproportionate share of foreign-born workers at both ends of the spectrum in those sectors and the immigration crackdown that’s happening federally is slowing flows for workers in both sectors.”
2. GE Renewable Energy has to stay on the job at Vineyard Wind, even though the two companies are in the middle of a legal dispute over a shattered wind turbine blade, a judge in Boston ruled. The whole thing started two years ago, when a blade broke at the offshore wind project. A Vineyard Wind engineer assessed the damage and determined that GE had cost the wind farm $850 million. Vineyard Wind withheld about $300 million in payments, and GE’s attorneys said the company has the right to leave its contract over nonpayment.
Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp said Vineyard Wind still needs GE’s “proprietary know-how” to get the turbines up and running. “And [Vineyard Wind] continues to be at risk of losing financing for the project,” he wrote.
3. There were 31 people killed in domestic violence crimes in 2024, the highest number in five years, according to a state report released yesterday. Overall there were 26,297 domestic violence offenses that year, slightly lower than the year before. Most of them were assaults.
Domestic killings are often a “preventable tragedy,” said Vilma Uribe, the executive director of the Governor’s Council to Address Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, and Human Trafficking. Last year, lawmakers in Massachusetts cut about 8% of funding from Department of Public Health programs that support domestic violence and sexual assault services.
4. It’s not over for Clover Food Lab: the fast-casual lunch chain announced it was shutting down for good last week, but in the days since, it has made a deal with an investor who will allow it to reopen some of their locations.
The details have not yet been worked out — including how many locations will reopen or which ones. But a company official said the chain is looking at locations in Cambridge and Boston and expects to reopen for lunch on Tuesday.
Pediatricians face awkward vaccine conversations following breakup with the CDC
A lot of what we hear about vaccines comes from big, public conversations, from congressional hearings to social media influencers. But there are also the conversations that happen in private, between pediatricians and parents.
New England Public Media reporter Karen Brown got to sit in on a few of those conversations with Dr. John Snyder, a pediatrician in Amherst. He’s one of the doctors in the Pioneer Valley who helped create Valley Vax, a website with information about vaccines that was launched as Trump appointees changed the CDC’s suggested vaccine schedule.
“Some [parents] say explicitly, ‘We are going with what the CDC says,’” Snyder said. “And even if they don’t say that, we have definitely seen increasing hesitancy and questions — and all of that interferes with us protecting children.”
Brown saw appointments where Snyder explained which vaccines he would give and how, and parents agreed with few follow-ups. Snyder said he doesn’t try to argue with parents who say they refuse to vaccinate their kids. He does offer to answer questions for those who are worried or confused.
One mother, who came in with her 14-year-old son, said she would let him decide whether he wanted an HPV vaccine (though she refused it at past appointments.) She felt differently about the COVID shot.
“I’m a hard no on the COVID,” she said.
“We could talk about that if you want,” Snyder replied.
“I don’t need to talk about it,” she said.
“There is nobody in political power or the government that cares about little old me and my children, which is why I kind of feel we have to make decisions on our own,” she told Brown after the appointment. Of the CDC, she said, “I worry that it’s been politicized a lot. And I don’t like politics.”