THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996 TAG: 9606200455
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WANCHESE LENGTH: 57 lines
Acres of dead croaker and other fish have been spotted floating in the Roanoke Sound between this fishing village and Oregon Inlet.
``We were coming back from the inlet going north, coming back toward Pirate's Cove,'' said Dave Woody, a recreational fisherman from Nags Head. ``There were thousands and thousands of fish - they were all over the water.''
Woody said he went out with a friend at 7 p.m. Tuesday to fish for Spanish mackerel at Oregon Inlet. He said they saw nothing unusual when they left. But when they came back about midnight, dead croaker started appearing as they moved farther north.
``It was hard to believe,'' Woody said Wednesday. ``There was no way you could miss 'em.''
Harrel Johnson, district manager of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, said a crew he sent out Wednesday morning confirmed that thousands of mostly medium-sized croakers were floating on top of the water. Fishermen said bluefish, spot, trout and blow toads also were dead.
Johnson said the fish had decomposed too far to determine what killed them or where they came from.
``Most certainly, you have to remember that the wind blows - no telling where these fish died,'' Johnson said. ``We can't really determine a cause when the fish have been dead that long.''
It is unlikely that the croakers' death was caused by an environmental problem, Johnson added.
``Usually, when one sees an environmental kill, it affects an entire ecosystem, not one species,'' he said.
Woody also said he believed the dead fish had nothing to do with pollution or an environmental fluke.
``My theory was they were dumped off of a boat. . . . It was probably a by-catch. There would not be so many fish in one area unless somebody dumped them,'' said the sport fisherman. ``It couldn't have been a kill. I just don't think there was an environmental thing in that one spot only.''
Croakers can be caught in gill nets, pound nets, trawlers, or by hook and line. There are no legal limits on the size of the fish or on the amount harvested.
One commercial fisherman, Billy Carl Tillett, said he has no idea why so many fish were out there, but something like bad water could have killed them.
``It very well could be a very strong possibility with all this rain,'' Tillett said. ``We ran into this before with flounder.''
Tillett said people always blame commercial fishermen first. He said trawlers, which can catch large amounts of fish by dragging nets, do not work in the area the croakers were found.
``You can't even float there hardly,'' Tillett said of his big boats.
Capt. Steve McCaskill, who took a charter party fishing aboard his recreational head-boat The Crystal Dawn on Wednesday, said the dead fish covered at least a mile of sound waters between Wanchese and Duck Island.
``All the people were upset at seeing so many fish floating,'' said McCaskill. ``They were scared the fish might have had some kind of disease, and they wanted to throw the ones they were catching back just in case. But those dead fish looked mashed - not sick - like something had happened to them.'' by CNB