DATE: Friday, May 23, 1997                  TAG: 9705230694

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT                     LENGTH:   71 lines

BABY EELS CAUSE FULL-SIZE HEADACHES ALL 'ROUND ONE AGENCY SAYS A TRIO'S LAKE FISHING TRIP WAS ILLEGAL. ANOTHER SEES NO PROBLEM.

Warren Cosby is a big, burly man trying to start the first baby eel farm in Virginia. The venture, if successful, could open a new and lucrative seafood industry in the lower Chesapeake Bay.

But Cosby, of New Kent, was charged this spring with illegal fishing and trespassing while collecting a few pounds of these transparent, noodlelike creatures from Tormentors Lake near Smithfield.

Also charged were two state officials, including Cosby's wife, Ellen, who have said they were only observing what they thought was a legal harvest of baby eels, also known as elvers.

The slippery case went to court Thursday; the results were equally slippery.

Charges against Warren Cosby were dropped by a state Marine Patrol officer who was staking out Tormentors Lake at 1:45 a.m. on March 29. His surveillance was part of an interagency investigation into what wildlife officials believed was an eel poaching ring operating in Hampton Roads.

However, trespassing charges were not dropped against Ellen B. Cosby and Lewis S. Gillingham, both staffers at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, who were admittedly with Cosby on his late-night elver gig.

Confused?

So were many of the lawyers, defendants and witnesses who listened to the goings-on at the Isle of Wight General District Court on Thursday.

It seems that Ellen Cosby and Gillingham were both charged by a game warden with the state Game and Inland Fisheries Department - an agency that still suspects that something fishy was going on that night.

On the other hand, Warren Cosby was charged by a Marine Patrol officer, who works for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission - an agency that is convinced that nothing but miscommunication went on that night.

Col. Jeff Uerz, chief of enforcement for the Game and Inland Fisheries Department, explained afterward that his agency believes that the trio might have been trespassing on private property while fishing. He intends to pursue the charges brought by his game warden.

If convicted, the two state officials could face a maximum sentence of 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

However, Warren Cosby's lawyer, William A. Dervishian, had called a state engineer to testify that the trio were not fishing on private property, but from a public dam.

The case, which will be decided at a newly scheduled trial, on July 10, has done little to warm relations between the two state wildlife agencies. And it has not given the fledging elver industry an upbeat start.

``It's just ridiculous,'' Warren Cosby said outside the courtroom. ``This all could have been avoided so easily.''

It is unlawful in Virginia to catch or possesses elvers less than 6 inches long. Cosby, however, holds one of two state permits granted under an experimental program to collect undersized elvers and market them, presumably for big bucks.

Elvers can fetch as much as $325 a pound to merchants outside of Virginia, officials have estimated. The squirmy youngsters, usually between 2 and 6 inches, are then sold to European and Asian fish farmers, who grow them to market size. Eel is a particular delicacy in Japan, China and South Korea.

With so much money up for grabs for something so small as a baby eel, the lure to cheat and poach is powerful. In February, for example, state wildlife investigators nabbed two men - one from Maine, the other from New Jersey - who were holding 24,000 undersized elvers while fishing off the James River.

Four others have been arrested and charged with illegal fishing and trespassing violations as part of the eel probe, state officials have said.

The eels themselves are remarkable creatures. The American eel's entire population is born on the warm, windless edge of the Sargasso Sea in the south Atlantic. They mate just once, then die. Their offspring slither north for freshwater and inland streams, arriving each year in the lower Chesapeake in late winter or early spring.

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