TITLE: Pfiesteria hits Chesapeake Bay Maryland reaction is swift, concerted
BYLINE: JAMES ELI SHIFFER
CREDIT: STAFF WRITER
EST. PAGES: 4
DATE: 08/10/97
DOCID: RNOB97221167
SOURCE: The News & Observer Raleigh, NC; RNOB
EDITION: Final; SECTION: News; PAGE: A1
(Copyright 1997)
SHELLTOWN, Md. -- For months, the watermen of this remote
fishing village knew that something was wrong with their river.
Fish speckled with sores were turning up in their nets. Then the
watermen themselves started to get sick.
Finally, Wednesday, more than 10,000 dead fish bobbed to the
surface of the Pocomoke River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay
that runs through Shelltown. For watermen such as Jack Howard,
the fish kill was final proof that their beloved Pocomoke was
suffering the same fate as a waterway to the south.
"It's an emotional and devastating experience,"
said Howard, 46, who quit fishing in April because of chronic
respiratory problems he blames on the river. "I never thought
we'd have what the Neuse had."
This week's fish kill - Maryland's first major one in six years
- holds several parallels with the Neuse in 1995. Picture a scenic
river threatened by farm runoff, fish infested with lesions and
fishermen complaining about rashes, respiratory infections and
memory loss. Then picture regulators dealing with another outbreak
of pfiesteria piscicida - a toxic algae that has killed millions
of fish in North Carolina and is now plaguing the Chesapeake.
In sheer numbers, the Pocomoke kill is far smaller than kills
in the Neuse, New and Pamlico rivers since the 1980s. But Maryland's
response contrasts sharply with what occurred in North Carolina.
Whereas Tar Heel officials organized a fish fry in 1995 to
demonstrate that the Neuse's seafood was safe, Maryland on Thursday
shut down fishing, boating and swimming on a five-mile stretch
of the Pocomoke and enforced the ban with armed patrols. Last
weekend, it organized the state's best doctors to examine watermen
and convened a summit of 60 top scientists to discuss the river's
condition. And unlike their counterparts in North Carolina, Maryland
officials have actively enlisted the help of JoAnn Burkholder,
an N.C. State University aquatic botanist who helped discover
pfiesteria.
Since May, Burkholder has shuttled several times between Raleigh
and Maryland's Eastern Shore.
"The state of Maryland has just been light-years more
proactive," Burkholder said. "I got involved because
I found it a refreshing change from my own state."
On Friday night, Burkholder told state officials that six out
of 12 samples taken from the water this week contained concentrations
of pfiesteria or a similar organism and that three had levels
considered lethal to fish.
For Maryland officials, the news was a grim confirmation that
the Chesapeake is still recovering from decades of pollution,
overfishing and water-quality problems. But it also reassured
them that the state's aggressive approach is justified.
Said Dave Goshorn, a Maryland water quality scientist, "We
learned our lesson from North Carolina."
Location was surprising:
An unlikely setting for an environmental crisis, the Pocomoke
is considered one of the most majestic waterways on Maryland's
Eastern Shore. The river journeys through cypress swamps, along
corn and tomato farms and under the elegant white bridges of two
river towns - Snow Hill and Pocomoke City - whose 8,000 total
residents live in blocks of gabled Victorian homes.
Compared to the Neuse, the Pocomoke's waters are relatively
fast-moving, and its watershed - which starts in rural Delaware
- so far has escaped the Neuse basin's rapid growth.
Fishermen, canoeists and bird watchers flock to the Pocomoke.
In Shelltown, eight watermen regularly harvest crab and several
kinds of fish from traps and nets in the river's lower reaches.
At Fred W. Maddox & Son Seafood Co., a Shelltown fish house,
Thursday's catch arrived iced, wrapped in tinfoil and sporting
ugly sores. The menhaden, perch and croaker had succumbed to this
week's fish kill in the Pocomoke's black, tangy-scented waters.
Dr. Eric May, chief of aquatic animal health for the Maryland
Fisheries Service, converted a table into a makeshift fish morgue
and used a bent scissors to remove the animals' brains, eyes and
other organs for further study.
"Each one has a story to tell us," May told a group
of University of Maryland graduate students who crowded around
him. While officials awaited a determination from Burkholder's
lab, May noted the evidence that pointed toward pfiesteria. The
organism, which has several different life stages, leaves dime-sized
holes in fish, which tend to rise to the surface and spin in a
slow "death spiral."
The state has all but taken over the Maddox fish house, which
sits on an isolated point where the Pocomoke widens before emptying
into the Chesapeake. Within minutes of hearing about Wednesday's
fish kill, state Secretary of Natural Resources John Griffin had
commandeered a police helicopter and flew to the Maddox property
for a firsthand look.
Problems since spring:
The property has been swarming with researchers, politicians
and television camera crews for weeks, since watermen, including
three members of the Maddox family, started claiming this spring
that pfiesteria was threatening their health and livelihood. An
on-site fish and water monitoring station was setting up Friday.
Both of Maryland's U.S. senators, who have already gotten $500,000
in emergency federal funding to study the problem, plan visits
to the area this week.
"This is obviously a source of growing alarm," said
Griffin, before flying back to Annapolis on Wednesday evening.
"We'll be busting our buns to find it what it is."
When 14 million fish died during a pfiesteria outbreak in October
1995, North Carolina officials waited a week before closing the
river. Instead of working with Burkholder, some state officials
ridiculed her at a public meeting in New Bern, prompting a later
apology from the administration of Gov. Jim Hunt.
At last weekend's "fish lesion summit" in Salisbury,
Md., Burkholder found herself the unofficial guest of honor, with
scientists, public officials and watermen lined up to consult
with her. "I just got the red carpet," said Burkholder,
whose life was recently chronicled in a book, "And the Waters
Turned to Blood."
Burkholder said that Maryland officials have agreed to her
suggestion that watermen participate in the testing of water and
seafood. But she gives credit for the state's responsiveness to
the watermen themselves, who have been calling for action ever
since October, when they hauled in a catch of sickly fish.
Many watermen and conservationists point to a familiar culprit
for the river's current troubles. They blame the watershed's large
number of chicken farms for sending slugs of nitrogen into the
Pocomoke, especially during last year's unusually heavy rains.
They see the fish kill as a result of that pollution.
"As if we needed another reason to worry about animal
waste nutrients, this was a real kick in the teeth," said
Mike Hirshfield, a vice president for Chesapeake Bay Foundation,
the region's largest environmental group with more than 80,000
members.
Scientists at last weekend's summit in Salisbury concluded
that agricultural runoff was a primary cause of the microbes,
bacteria or fungi that could be causing the fish lesions. But
Goshorn, chief of the state's Living Resource Assessment Program,
said it's too early to point the finger at any one polluter.
"There are plenty of other rivers in Maryland with an
intense number of chicken farms," he said.
Danger for people:
It's not just the health of the fish that concerns Lori Maddox,
who - along with her husband, Ray, and father-in-law, Fred - has
been sick since last fall. Maddox, 26, said she has suffered shortness
of breath, nausea, leg sores and even memory loss.
"When we don't fish, we don't have the problems,"
she said.
Pfiesteria has been linked to neurological and physical maladies
in Burkholder and other researchers who accidentally inhaled the
organism's toxins in the laboratory. But earlier this year, a
state-funded study in North Carolina disavowed any link between
pfiesteria and injury to Tar Heel crabbers.
In Pocomoke City, the watermen's woes prompted a local doctor,
Ritchie Shoemaker, to open a clinic last week for people who believe
they're suffering from water-related illnesses.
Shoemaker, a Duke University graduate, often shows visitors
photographs of a local man who suffered a severe headache and
30 lesions after waterskiing in the lower Pocomoke for a half-hour.
"I've not seen anyone with a rash like this in my life,"
he said.
As in North Carolina, where state health officials tell the
public to avoid fish kills but acknowledge no link between pfiesteria
and chronic illness, Maryland's public health authorities say
they have no evidence yet that the Pocomoke's waters can sicken
humans.
Dr. Martin Wasserman, Maryland's secretary of health and mental
hygiene, said panic over the possible presence of pfiesteria has
already proved a danger to public health. After the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation warned people to wash themselves with a 10 percent
bleach solution if they touch any contaminated water, the state
issued its own warning, noting that bleach could seriously damage
the eyes.
"Part of my role is to maintain a level of calm as we
go about solving problems," Wasserman said.
Calm seems a distant memory for residents and tourists in the
Pocomoke area. In Pocomoke City, worried residents stop Mayor
Curt Lippoldt in the Wal-Mart to ask if it's safe to go near the
water. Late this week, the fish kill was the main topic of conversation
for visitors at bed-and-breakfasts and the Pocomoke River State
Park campground.
Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association,
supports the state's intervention on the Pocomoke, but he's worried
the problem is being blown out of proportion.
"It's killing the seafood market," Simns, a Rock
Hall waterman, said Thursday. "It's killing the charter boat
industry."
"People get scared when they hear something's wrong with
the water. They don't want to eat anything out of it."
Few are expecting the same massive fish kills that have occurred
in North Carolina's estuaries. But authorities in both Maryland
and Delaware still consider pfiesteria a grave enough threat to
devote huge time and resources to it.
Griffin, the Maryland natural resources secretary, joked that
it's typical that Burkholder found a much more willing audience
among public officials outside North Carolina.
"You can't be a prophet in your own land," he said.
ART: 2 c photos; photo; graphic; map;
Caption: Jack Howard, a Shelltown, Md., fisherman and Pocomoke River water quality activist, pulls up a trap full of dead fish. He stopped fishing commercially in April because of respiratory problems that he blames on pfiesteria. These three menhaden with lesions were among the casualties of a fish kill that prompted officials to close part of the Pocomoke River. A sea gull snatches a dead fish from the Pocomoke River after it surfaced during last week's fish kill.;
Credit: Photos by Theresa Blackwell for The News & Observer
DESCRIPTORS: water; Chesapeake Bay; Maryland; health; environment;
fishing; industry