DATE: Tuesday, October 7, 1997              TAG: 9710070318

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: GLOUCESTER POINT                  LENGTH:   66 lines

CHESAPEAKE BAY TEAM GETS STRONG WARNING: OVERCOME PFIESTERIA

Rick Dove drove here from North Carolina on Monday night with a simple warning - Virginia, don't mess around with Pfiesteria piscicida.

The toxic microbe has killed more than 1 billion fish in North Carolina estuaries since 1991, including the Neuse River, over which Dove is a paid environmental observer.

``If you ever have the problem in the Chesapeake (Bay) that we've had in the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, you're in bad, bad trouble,'' Dove told a special assembly of the Virginia House Committee on the Chesapeake and its Tributaries.

The panel, chaired by state Del. Jarrauld C. Jones, D-Norfolk, met in this small town on the York River to hear public testimony and scientific expertise about pfiesteria. The microscopic organism is suspected of killing at least 12,000 fish this summer in Virginia and Maryland waterways, and of sickening some 28 Maryland watermen and state researchers.

Another seven Virginians are being examined for pfiesteria-like reactions, such as skin lesions, memory loss, headaches and nausea.

Mike Hoke, a recreational fisherman who lives a half-mile from the James River in Richmond, is one of the seven.

He testified Monday night that he has fished much of the spring and summer on the James and Rappahannock rivers; scientists suspect that a pfiesteria-like microrganism has sprouted in the Rappahannock.

Hoke said he has seen more catfish with lesions on their bodies this summer than in the previous 20 years he has spent on the water. Something, he said, is very wrong.

He has been told by doctors that the persistent sores on his hands and forehead, the headaches and slight memory loss could be the workings of pfiesteria. Or exposure to a toxic chemical. Or one of several other influences.

Hoke, 33, is scheduled to undergo physical, psychological and neurological tests today at a Richmond hospital, he said.

He and a dozen other speakers urged the committee to recommend strong, decisive action to combat the microbe when the General Assembly convenes in January. Those may include stricter regulation of chicken and hog farms, which have been linked to pfiesteria blooms by some scientists, who say natural nutrients in livestock manure are partially to blame.

Others in the audience Monday - including local government officials, seafood merchants and farm advocates - were not so convinced. To them, the measured reaction of Gov. George F. Allen's administration has been correct - namely, wait for definitive scientific conclusions before launching a new regulatory campaign or closing river systems.

``Silver-bullet solutions that have not undergone scientific review'' are not the prudent way to go, said Ed Scott, a representative of the Virginia Agribusiness Council.

In Maryland on Monday, during a separate hearing, an Eastern Shore congressman testified that new farming regulations would devastate the industry there - when scientists are trying to sort out how and when pfiesteria strikes.

Normally a quiet organism that lives in bottom sediments, pfiesteria changes its personality under undetermined circumstances and becomes highly aggressive. When agitated, it attacks fish, injecting them with a toxin that can kill fish within minutes.

The leading expert on the microbe, JoAnn Burkholder, a North Carolina State researcher, has linked the personality change to the over-enrichment of waters with nitrogen and phosphorus, both found in human and animal wastes.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, in letters to the governors of Virginia and Maryland, is asking for a redoubled effort at reducing the two nutrients through stricter government limits on farm pollution.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu