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A LONG SUMMER AHEAD?

In Maryland, officials confirmed that fish found with sores this week in an Eastern Shore river carried traces of Pfiesteria. But they said it is too early to tell whether the Chesapeake Bay watershed "is poised for a repeat of the intense Pfiesteria outbreak" of last summer.

A $1 million monitoring system implemented after last summer alerted officials to the small fish kill this week (Layton/Shields, Washington Post, 8/7).

In Virginia, a survey crew has found what appears to be "the first sign that [the] toxic microbe might be back in Virginia's waters." About 10% of 361 menhaden caught on the Great Wicomico River showed sores of the kind associated with Pfiesteria (Lawrence Latane, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8/7).

PFIESTERIA: FALSE ALARM IN MD -- RESEARCHER There is no evidence of the Pfiesteria microbe on the Great Wicomico River in Maryland, "at least not in numbers to cause trouble," according to a scientist studying the river where fish with Pfiesteria-like lesions were found last week (Greenwire, 8/7).

Harold Marshall of Old Dominion U. said the samples from the Great Wicomico River contained one-celled dinoflagellates, which resemble Pfiesteria piscida but are normally found in tidal water. Marshall: "[The number of cells] were what you'd call within normal background counts" (Lawrence Latane, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8/8).

Local business owners criticized the publicity surrounding the early results. Fisher Lori Maddox: "Making a huge, big deal over 30 fish with lesions is totally ridiculous" (Shields/Layton, Washington Post, 8/8).

Meanwhile, North Carolina State U. on 8/8 opened a $650,000 lab to serve as a multi-state clearinghouse for testing water samples for Pfiesteria. It is set up to get results delivered to state agencies within 24 hours (AP/Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8/8).