DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709080039

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CRISFIELD, MD.                    LENGTH:   54 lines

POCOMOKE RIVER TROUBLES HARM BAY SEAFOOD SALES, CHARTER FISHING INDUSTRY

Despite efforts by state officials to assure the public that fish lesions and health problems suffered by watermen on the Pocomoke River have been confined to that waterway, the economic impact is being felt across the Chesapeake Bay.

The price paid by wholesalers for rockfish has dropped dramatically along with demand, and recreational fishermen are finding something else to do with their time.

``We're just throwing our hands up. Our members are saying, `You got to do something,' '' said Joe Rupp, president of the 350-member Maryland Charter Boat Association.

``The sad part is that fishing is fabulous,'' Rupp said. ``No fish is perfect, but nobody has caught anything we consider not normal.''

Recent fish kills and findings by researchers that the microorganism Pfiesteria piscicida has been linked to skin lesions, memory loss and other health effects in humans has prompted health officials to close a stretch of the Pocomoke to commercial and recreational use.

Although only about 1 percent of Maryland seafood comes from the Pocomoke River, mostly menhaden used for bait, the public has become wary of all Bay seafood.

Larry Simns, a charter boat captain and president of the Maryland Watermen's Association, said ``the bottom fell out of'' the rockfish market late last month.

The price watermen received for rockfish has dropped from $2.30 a pound to $1.25 a pound, even though pfiesteria has not affected rockfish, Simns said.

Wholesaler Danny Elburn of Rock Hall on the upper Eastern Shore said he had to make five trips to Philadelphia to sell the same amount of rockfish he used to sell in one trip to Baltimore.

Worried consumers ``can't separate the Pocomoke River from up here at the head of the bay. It's a shame. It's escalated,'' Elburn said.

Some restaurants have taken rockfish off the menu and some wholesalers have seen their rockfish orders drop as much as 1,000 pounds in a week, Simns said.

``People are afraid of everything. The general feeling is it's safer not to eat anything than to gamble,'' Simns said.

The Chesapeake charter boat business normally attracts about 250,000 people for 20,000 trips a year. Charter captains generally charge about $300 for a group of six.

Rupp said he estimates charter fishing is off by about half since the first reports of pfiesteria.

``I probably get 10 calls a day about this,'' said Perry Coleman, who runs the tackle shop and books charters in Chesapeake Beach, about 70 miles north and on the other side of the bay from the Pocomoke.

``I was talking to a captain who said a party called who had just read the (fish kill) article and just canceled the trip. This guy just lost a day's work, just because of that.''

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