Father waits for answers about presumed fish attack in Montreal lake

Almost five months after his eight-year-old son was viciously attacked by a mysterious underwater creature while swimming in the man-made lake on Île Notre-Dame, George Mandl is still waiting to hear what park authorities plan to do to make sure the lake is safe for swimmers.

“I’ve been somewhat obsessed with this since it happened,” Mandl told The Gazette in a phone interview recently. “My understanding of what probably happened is that there was a muskie in that water that attacked him, thinking his leg was food.”

Since the attack, the organization that runs the park has ordered DNA testing in the lake and nearby waters, consulted with biologists and fish and amphibian experts and inspected the floating structure the boy was playing on. But so far, no corrective measures have been announced. The Gazette had to resort to access-to-information requests for internal documents to get some answers.

Mandl, a film and TV editor from Los Angeles, was visiting Montreal with his son Max last June 26. They headed to Parc Jean Drapeau on Île Notre-Dame, the artificial island created for Expo 67 using rock and soil excavated during the construction of Montreal’s métro system.

Father and son were enjoying the summer day, running around on a floating apparatus called Aquazilla in the middle of the lake, officially known as Lac des Régates. Young Max was jumping in and climbing out of the water. The boy was treading water beside the apparatus when suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his leg.

“It was just a flash of pain hitting my leg, just something jabbing into it,” Max told an episode of the Outdoor Journal Radio podcast titled “Attacked by a muskie?!” a few weeks after the incident. “And then I felt something slash it two times. I couldn’t see it. It was so fast, with so much pain.”

Max’s dad was a few metres away and at first thought his son was just fooling around. But when a lifeguard reached over and pulled Max out of the water by his life-jacket, Mandl saw that his son’s leg was bleeding. A lot.

“I ran over, looked down at him and he was screaming like I’ve not heard him scream before and, yeah, his leg was just gushing” Mandl said.

The lifeguards quickly bandaged the boy’s leg and brought him to land, where an ambulance took him to the Montreal Children’s Hospital. He received several stitches and may have scars, though no lasting physical injuries. But his father would still like some answers.

After months of researching and speaking to fish experts, Mandl is convinced his son was bitten by a muskellunge, also known as a muskie.

Other theories that the boy cut his leg on underwater cables or on zebra mussels attached to the underside of the play structure don’t hold water if one listens to the description of the incident by either Max or his father. George says the injuries themselves look like bites and slices, not scratches.

“As soon as it bit into his leg it realized, ‘Oh no, this isn’t food. It may be a threat,’” Mandl theorized. “Max starts thrashing around under the water. The fish starts thrashing around under the water. The fish releases the knee … and then I believe it has sharp, blade-like parts of its body that protect its gills … If it’s backing out of an attack it’s gonna thrash around and those things are gonna slice whatever’s in the way. And so when I look at (Max’s) leg and at the injuries, I can see, like, bite marks and I can see what look like razor blade slashes.”

Through access-to-information requests, The Gazette has learned that park officials consider it most probable the boy was attacked by a muskie or a snapping turtle. Because of the nature of the boy’s injuries, experts have said a muskie is the most likely culprit.

The muskie is a large, predatory freshwater fish native to the St. Lawrence River, the body of water that surrounds Île Notre-Dame and the water source for the artificial lake.

Muskie attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, with only a handful of such incidents recorded in North America in recent history. Still, park users have expressed concern that no actions seem to have been taken by the Société du Parc Jean-Drapeau to reduce risk for users, or at least reassure them. For example, in an email to park authorities obtained by The Gazette, one user asked if the park would consider installing nets around the floating structure to keep fish out.

Other solutions have been suggested and so far, apparently, ignored.

Less than two weeks after the June 26 incident, the Montreal chapter of a conservation and sport fishing group called Muskies Canada offered to organize a catch-and-release operation to try to remove any Muskies from the lake and relocate them to the river.

Muskies are prized by sports fishers because of their impressive size and because they are difficult to catch. These fish can grow to more than 1.5 metres and weigh more than 40 kilograms.

According to Quebec’s environment department, the population of muskellunge experienced a sharp decline in the St. Lawrence River basin over the last century. But thanks to conservation efforts over several decades combined with the establishment of minimum legal size limits for sport fishing, the population has gradually increased.

The Gazette has repeatedly requested an interview with representatives of the Société du Parc Jean-Drapeau. In September, the communications team offered this statement.

“The safety of users and employees is a priority for the Société du Parc Jean-Drapeau. Following the incident on June 26, our teams carried out various observations on site to analyze the safety of the environment and the aquatic structure. No element that could cause the injuries described has been identified. A water sampling analysis was then carried out to assess the presence of aquatic fauna in the Lac des Régates. The results do not reveal the presence of muskellunge DNA, and none of the species identified could have caused the injuries observed.”

Those DNA tests were carried out by a company called Génome Québec on July 19 at three sites: in the lake near the floating device, the Olympic Basin and in the river near the intake pump.

The results, obtained by The Gazette, showed evidence of the recent presence of the following fish in the Lac des Régates: sunfish, rock bass, alewife and round gobie. There was also evidence of the presence of humans, ducks and pigs (the latter likely because of agricultural run-off into the river).

Noémie Poirier Stewart, a consultant with Génome Québec, noted that the lack of DNA traces of a certain creature does not prove that muskies are not present in the lake. Also, DNA breaks down in a matter of hours or weeks depending on conditions like temperature and movement of the water.

The tests showed a heavy presence of muskie DNA in the tests taken in the river near the intake pump.

Internal documents from the Société du Parc Jean Drapeau reveal:

“The fact that the water comes from the river and the diameter of the grids are big enough to let fish pass renders the hypothesis of the muskellunge probable (since it is present in the river),” that document states.

The same document says an expert in reptiles and amphibians confirmed the bites could have come from a snapping turtle, but noted that these animals generally keep away from humans and only bite if provoked, or if they mistake a human for food.

In another document, an official with the park sums up the situation after a meeting with representatives of Génome Québec and the provincial environment department:

“The fact no DNA for a species was found does not signify that it is not present (sampling is limited by the size and depth of the lake). None of the species recorded could have caused the injuries to our victim. To enhance the analysis, sampling campaigns should be carried out for each habitat stratum (depth) and preferably in the fall (when the Olympic Basin and the beach are drained.) The Lac des Régates is not a favourable environment for the reproduction of muskellunge, but their life span is long (20 to 30 years). Muskellunge are present in many lakes of Quebec including those with public beaches (eg. Lac des Deux Montagnes) without attacks being recorded.

“Taking into account all of the above, the hypothesis remains that the injuries were caused by a muskellunge or a snapping turtle, but this would result from an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Consequently, all the speakers at the meeting agreed to be careful not to stigmatize/demonize these two species in our communications.”

For Nicolas Perrier, president of the Montreal chapter of Muskies Canada, a public catch-and-release operation would not “demonize” the muskie. It would show the park authority is doing what it can to reduce any risk to users, even if that risk is small.

“We are still willing to offer them a solution because this is the off-season,” he said. “Nobody is swimming there … They just said ‘Thank you, we are going to consider this’ and never got back to me.”

The park authority has not responded to The Gazette’s question about whether such an operation will be carried out.

Perrier says it is not too late.

“We can go out there even if there are patches of ice floating around. This is our high season, actually. We are on the water until mid-December. If it takes some kind of discrete action, we’d be willing to do that. We think a public one would be better. We are a conservation organization. I think it would be beneficial to show … our services would be free of charge. We are not like rat extermination that wants to kill animals. We are there to move nature to where it should be.”

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