TITLE: FISH DEATHS LEAVE EXPERTS UNCERTAIN
BYLINE: The Associated Press
EST. PAGES: 2
DATE: 08/11/97
DOCID: GRNB72230167
SOURCE: Greensboro News & Record; GRNB
EDITION: ALL; SECTION: TRIAD/STATE; PAGE: B2
(Copyright 1997)
The Pocomoke River outbreak has scientists scratching their
heads trying to come up with a reason for the deaths of thousands
of fish.
The mysterious deaths of thousands of fish on the lower Pocomoke
River have mobilized state scientists, sending them scurrying
to explain the cause.
Experts from three agencies are on hand, as are specialists
from local health agencies, research hospitals and the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, all trying to determine what is causing fish to
get bloody sores and lesions, what is causing the fish to die.
But what happens if they determine the main suspect, a microorganism
called Pfiesteria piscicida that ravaged North Carolina river
life, is to blame?
The options are limited.
"We're dealing with Mother Nature. There's not much you
can do about it," said Don Boesch, president of the University
of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and head of a panel
looking into the problem.
The single fact suggesting the cause of lesions on fish could
be something other than Pfiesteria, which destroyed a billion
fish in North Carolina's Pamlico and Neuse rivers, was the absence
of a major fish kill on the Pocomoke.
That changed Wednesday, when thousands of menhaden, croakers,
spot, rockfish and blue crabs died along a half-mile stretch near
the mouth of the river, which forms a short portion of the Virginia-Maryland
border.
Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin said the kill increased
the likelihood that Pfiesteria was to blame.
But even if it is Pfiesteria, known to be lethal to fish and
believed by some to cause human health problems as well, the microorganism
is difficult, if not impossible, to control.
When the kill entered its second day, officials indefinitely
closed a five-mile stretch of the river to fishing, boating and
swimming. It is likely to be reopened 24 to 48 hours after the
kill ends because, according to North Carolina's researchers,
the organism becomes nontoxic by that point.
Closing the river for an extended period would accomplish little
more than hurting fishing businesses, since Pfiesteria doesn't
stay toxic for long and is harmless in most of the 30 or so shapes
it takes, officials said.
As for getting rid of the organism, forget it.
Anything that would kill this microorganism would probably
kill other life in the water, including the fish.
Scientists can only hope to learn why it has recently flared
up and eliminate whatever may be stimulating it.
JoAnn Burkholder, a North Carolina State University researcher
who helped discover pfiesteria, said increases in nutrients like
phosphorus from farm runoff can help sustain pfiesteria.
A reduction in nutrients could help get rid of pfiesteria -
in the long term.
But Boesch, a member of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's board
of directors, said researchers have not turned up a substantial
increase in nutrients going into the Pocomoke and that the problem
may be caused by something entirely different.
"There is no certain evidence that ... pollution of the
Pocomoke River is causing an outbreak of Pfiesteria," said
Boesch.