FROM RALEIGH (NC) NEWS & OBSERVER: 9/23/98:

Pfiesteria still baffles researchers

A panel of scientists cannot agree on the most basic characteristics of the organism that kills fish and makes people sick.

By JAMES ELI SHIFFER, Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Ten years ago, pfiesteria emerged into the world of science as a bizarre, shape-changing organism that killed fish in a Raleigh laboratory.

Today, the creature has morphed into a coastal threat deemed worthy of federal intervention, hundreds of thousands of dollars in research spending and river closings in North Carolina and Maryland.

Still, a panel of some of the organism's leading researchers say pfiesteria continues to confound them. No one knows how pfiesteria kills fish and sickens people, why it appears to thrive in polluted water or how to predict its outbreaks.

Even the aquatic creature's supposed signature -- bloody lesions drilled into the flesh of menhaden and other fish -- may be the work of a fungal infection, not pfiesteria, a Virginia researcher said at a one-day conference Tuesday in Washington.

But the five-member panel organized for the event by the National Sea Grant College Program, a research consortium, said the flurry of work on the organism over the past year is beginning to answer some questions. Panel members described faster methods to detect pfiesteria in waterways, and presented more evidence that people face no threat from eating seafood taken from pfiesteria-infested waters.

"To date, there has been no evidence for consumer concern," David Green, director of N.C. State University's seafood laboratory, said at the event, held at the National Press Club. "I really have very little doubt what's on the market is safe."

Since pfiesteria was first discovered in the laboratory in 1988, the creature has killed more than a billion fish in the Neuse and Pamlico rivers and sickened laboratory researchers. One of those scientists, NCSU aquatic ecologist JoAnn Burkholder, has blamed pfiesteria's sudden appearance on pollution of the state's fertile but fragile estuaries.

But pfiesteria became a national priority only last year, when watermen on the Pocomoke River in Maryland found their nets full of sore-pocked fish and their minds addled by something in the water.

A study of people exposed to pfiesteria that was published last month in the medical journal The Lancet helped confirm suspicions that direct exposure to the the organism can make people sick. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that pfiesteria also may cause long-term vision problems.

"We have clear evidence of human health effects from these waterways," said Dr. Glenn Morris, who led the Pocomoke River study. Even though the problem is localized and the health effects reversible, Morris said, pfiesteria remains a serious health concern.

"It is getting the attention it deserves," he said. "It says we are having a profound effect on our environment in unexpected ways."

Some of the most basic aspects of pfiesteria remain in contention, however. Wolfgang Vogelbein, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, said menhaden plucked from pfiesteria- infested waters in the Chesapeake last year suffered from a fish fungus known as Aphanomycete.

The 50 journalists, government officials and environmentalists attending Tuesday's conference gasped at Vogelbein's slides of fish with holes and chunks eaten out of them. But Vogelbein said that such lesions are not the best indicator for pfiesteria, because these sores were caused by Aphanomycete.

Burkholder contested Vogelbein's conclusions, saying she has watched pfiesteria boring holes in fish in laboratory tests. "In pfiesteria-related kills in North Carolina, 90 to 95 percent of the fish dying ... have sores," she said.

Proving pfiesteria is present in waterways currently takes as long as two weeks. New water tests could tell scientists the same information in a fraction of that time. Parke Rublee, a biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, tested new probes this summer in the lower Neuse River, where a pfiesteria outbreak killed a half-million fish.

The probes seek out the distinct genetic material of the organism. In one test, a chemical paints pfiesteria cells with a florescent-green glow.

"We should be able to tell much more clearly what the geographic distribution of the organism is," Rublee said. "Hopefully by next summer, a sample from a suspected outbreak will be analyzed in 24 to 48 hours."

James Shiffer can be reached at 836-5701 or jshiffer@nando.com