THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 4, 1995 TAG: 9508040500
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
The state Marine Fisheries Commission will be asked to decide soon whether to cancel the fall season for striped bass in the Albemarle Sound because of the numbers of the fish that have died in the oxygen-starved Roanoke River.
``The key term is mortality,'' said commission Chairman Robert V. Lucas. ``And as for how that affects our plan for managing striped bass, we'll have to determine that at the next commission meeting.''
Recent hot weather and a sudden reduction in water flowing into the river apparently caused a drop in dissolved oxygen in the Roanoke River late last week that led to fish kills and the temporary shutdown of the region's largest industry.
Thousands of fish along a 37-mile stretch of the Roanoke River from Hamilton to Jamesville - including striped bass, white perch, largemouth bass, sunfish, carp, American eels and suckers - have been killed in recent days, according to biologists with the Division of Marine Fisheries and the Wildlife Resources Commission.
Estimates by the two agencies set the number of striped bass killed on the river between 6,000 and 8,000 fish at an average of about four pounds per fish.
That's almost the equivalent of the entire fall season quota for the Albemarle Sound Management Area for commercial and sports anglers.
Generally, fisheries managers like to start the fall striped bass fishing season in late November with a commercial quota of 20,000 to 25,000 pounds and a recreational quota of about 14,500 pounds for the Albemarle Sound Management Area.
Also of concern to fisheries biologists is the size and age of most of the striped bass that have been killed. Most were 18 inches to 24 inches long and old enough to reproduce.
``The thing that still concerns me is the fact that so many of the fish that were impacted were spawners,'' said Harrel S. Johnson, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries' regional office in Elizabeth City. ``The question is how to population modelers and decision-makers deal with that when that calculate mortality?''
``To me that's the significance of this,'' Johnson said.
A crucial question for state fisheries managers in the wake of the fish kill will be whether to count the striped bass killed over the past two weeks towards the state's quota - a step some people believe will be needed to protect the striped bass fish stocks.
But if the commission does decide to cancel the fall striped bass season, it will be the second time in a year that Albemarle-area fishermen have had to bear the brunt of fisheries problems that were not the result of overfishing, Lucas said.
``We're going to have to use this mortality that comes from another cause and put it on the backs of the fishermen and that's not fair,'' he said. ``It just doesn't make sense.''
In December, the commission voted to close the season for herring in state waters on April 15 - a move that affected commercial fishermen on the Chowan and Roanoke rivers - after fisheries biologists said water quality concerns on the upper reaches of the Chowan River and dam construction on the Roanoke River had more to do with declines in fish populations than overfishing in the state's inside coastal waters.
``It's just very frustrating,'' Lucas said. ``It's beginning to make a mockery of the management system - a system where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.''
Fisheries managers are also concerned about the effects of the fish kill - just one week after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved the state's striped bass management plan - on the long-term recovery of the state's striped bass stocks.
The ASMFC's Striped Bass Management Board last week in Philadelphia agreed that low fishing mortality rates in the Roanoke River-Albemarle Sound system combined with other factors had restored the stock to its pre-1975 levels.
It also agreed that under the current management regime the local striped bass population would recover between 1997 and 2000. The board voted to allow North Carolina to continue its management plan through 1997, at which time the board will review and possibly relax some regulations.
Thursday morning, the Albemarle Sound's population of juvenile striped bass was showing little effects from the fish kill, according to Johnson.
Monitoring stations in the northern Albemarle Sound, where the greatest concentrations of young striped bass have been recorded, show dissolved oxygen between 6.2 parts per million and 7.3 parts per million on the water's surface and 5.8 parts per million to 6.9 parts per million near the bottom - more than sufficient for the fish.
But in some parts of the the southern Albemarle Sound, dissolved oxygen concentrations have ranged between 2.2 parts per million and 5.4 parts per million on the water's surface and around 0.5 parts per million on the bottom of the waterway.
Generally fish become stressed when dissolved oxygen concentrations drop below about 4 parts per million.
``This stuff is definitely getting ready bust out into the sound,'' Johnson said Thursday. ``We'll just have to wait and see how this gets assimilated.'' by CNB