DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709260803

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   70 lines

SCIENTISTS SUSPECT PFIESTERIA-HIT FISH WERE INFECTED IN MD. TEST RESULTS SHOW MICROBE IS IN ONLY MARYLAND'S PART OF THE POCOMOKE.

Test results show that a deadly microbe exists in the Maryland portion of the Pocomoke River but not in Virginia's half of the Eastern Shore waterway, a state environmental official said Thursday.

The finding leads scientists to believe that some 2,000 fish killed last month in the Virginia portion of the Pocomoke probably were attacked by the microorganism in Maryland waters, swam into Virginia waters and died there, said Frank Daniel, regional director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Speaking before the State Water Control Board, Daniel all but ruled out pfiesteria as the cause for deep lesions found on fish in the James River near Richmond, but said a ``pfiesteria-like'' microorganism probably exists in the upper Rappahannock River, near Tappahannock.

Daniel, a member of the Virginia Pfiesteria Task Force, which has been meeting since early summer, reiterated that no fish have died in the Rappahannock as a result of the microorganism, nor have any humans been harmed.

Therefore, he said, the river will remain open, despite some concerns among scientists and environmentalists that a part of it should be closed as a precaution until more is known about the one-celled predator.

The lower Pocomoke has been off-limits for fishing and human contact since Aug. 29. It was closed after a medical report linked a pfiesteria-like microbe to the illnesses of 13 watermen and Maryland state officials who had been splashed with river water.

Pfiesteria, which injects toxins into its victims, is blamed for killing a billion fish in North Carolina estuaries in recent years and is suspected in the deaths of 12,000 fish in the Pocomoke, mostly menhaden, last month.

A North Carolina State University research team discovered pfiesteria in its lab in the late 1980s. One researcher exposed to extremely high concentrations of the organism suffered such extensive memory loss that he had to take fundamental reading classes to recoup basic reading skills, Daniel said.

On Thursday, officials from mid-Atlantic states urged the federal government to mount a major research effort into the microbe - a plea also made by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Donald S. Beyer Jr. last week.

At a hearing in Washington, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee panel that recent appearances of the toxic form of pfiesteria should serve as a national warning that not all is right in America's waterways.

``The battle against pfiesteria is bigger than any one state. We need your help,'' Glendening told the panel. ``We need to better understand what pfiesteria is.''

Congress already has approved $7 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research and to develop a health response to pfiesteria.

Several House members said they expected $3 million more to be appropriated this year for additional federal research, and a bipartisan group of senators introduced a measure Thursday aimed at coordinating the research and providing grants for similar work at universities.

Daniel said in Richmond on Thursday that Old Dominion University and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science both have applied for state research grants to better understand and identify pfiesteria.

He also said that a report of dead fish in the Lafayette River in Norfolk turned out to be unrelated to pfiesteria; a witness told state officials that the fish were dumped on a Lafayette boat ramp.

Daniel said the discovery of lesioned fish in the James River, in May and last week, ``doesn't fit the scenario in any shape or form'' of pfiesteria. Surveys this week, he said, showed that only 1 percent of the fish collected had lesions and that they had no other signs of exposure to the microbe. MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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