TITLE: State expands effort to determine cause of bay fish ailment; Federal agency provides $250,000 study grant

BYLINE: Timothy B. Wheeler

CREDIT: SUN STAFF

EST. PAGES: 2

DATE: 07/02/97

DOCID: BSUN520533

SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun; BSUN

EDITION: FINAL; SECTION: METRO; PAGE: 2B

With anglers all over the Chesapeake Bay -- including Gov. Parris N. Glendening catching at least a few fish with sores on them, state officials said yesterday that they were expanding efforts to learn why. State officials are "very, very concerned" about reports of sick-looking fish in the Pocomoke River and elsewhere, said John R. Griffin, state secretary of natural resources. But "there is no cause for undue alarm," he said.

Sens. Paul S. Sarbanes and Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland Democrats, announced yesterday a $250,000 emergency grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help study fish disease in the Pocomoke.

Griffin said scientists suspect that a fish-eating alga, pfiesteria piscicida, might be causing lesions reported by watermen on white perch and other fish caught in the Pocomoke, on the lower Shore. "We are in hot pursuit of what's causing abrasions and lesions on fish in the Pocomoke River," he said. But firm evidence is lacking, Griffin said, and officials have even fewer clues about the cause of problems elsewhere in the bay.

Griffin said the governor had told him that some fish he hooked recently off Solomons had irregularly shaped open wounds. State officials have received more than 100 telephone calls on a hot line for anglers to report fish with lesions. The toll-free number is 888-448-0012. The largest number of reports came from around the Bay Bridge, but state officials said that might reflect the bridge's popularity as a fishing spot rather than a cluster of fish with sores.

A North Carolina laboratory tentatively identified pfiesteria in two of five water samples taken from the Pocomoke River last week, but a Florida scientist examining the same samples found nothing. Further analysis is needed, officials said. Meanwhile, a third lab in South Carolina has been enlisted in the search for the elusive toxic microorganism, which has been linked with huge fish kills in North Carolina coastal waters.

Some researchers, fishermen and swimmers in North Carolina have complained of skin sores, memory loss and other ailments that they linked with exposure to waters infested with pfiesteria. No health problems linked to pfiesteria have been documented in Maryland, said Diane Matuszak, a public health official with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. However, some lower Shore watermen say they have had flulike ailments that they attribute to fishing in the Pocomoke.

Health officials have warned against eating fish with sores or ulcers. They also have issued guidelines advising the public not to swim or wade in waters where there has been a fish kill in the previous 24 hours or where 20 percent or more of the fish being caught have lesions. "We're erring on the side of being safe," said Griffin.

Officials said they plan to continue sampling water, sediment and fish this week from around the bay, including the Magothy, Severn, South, Susquehanna, Patuxent and Potomac rivers. Also, water samples from the Pocomoke will be analyzed for toxic metals or pesticides. Poultry farming is the chief industry in the Pocomoke drainage basin, but Deirdre Murphy of the state Department of the Environment said officials have not found any obvious pollution that could be causing lesions.

Pfiesteria were identified in the bay in the early 1990s and in the Pocomoke in May, but officials say conditions in the river do not mirror those in the Carolinas, where there have been huge fish kills.