Coastal Waters

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Guiding a 19-foot outboard across Narragansett Bay, John Torgan recalls how the deceptively clear water once harbored an aquatic jungle that could tangle the propeller of an unwary boater."

The fish kills that have plagued Baltimore's Inner Harbor and nearby creeks over the past two weeks may have eased with the dip in temperatures, but scientists caution that's not the last we've seen of potentially toxic and even deadly algae blooms in area waters. As summer heats up again, potentially dangerous microorganisms could bloom in the wake of algae blamed for suffocating fish from Dundalk to Annapolis. Officials are keeping tabs on the growth of algae around the Chesapeake Bay that have poisoned tens of thousands of fish — including one type found blooming in a Cecil County river that has in the past killed two dogs and can also be fatal to humans.

Fish are disappearing at an alarming rate in U.S. coastal waters, with nearly one-third of all species having declined in population in the last 15 years, researchers say.In separate reports, a Massachusetts agency and two national environmental groups have reached the same conclusion about the fish population off the coast: Unless the National Marine Fisheries Service imposes stricter conservation measures and fishing regulations, many fish species may...

SAN FRANCISCO - A judge has ordered repeal of a federal regulation that has allowed ships to discharge ballast water freely into U.S. harbors and coastal waters. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said last week that the 1972 Clean Water Act prohibits the practice. Government and other reports have identified ballast water as the main source for the spread of invasive foreign species - more than 500 of them - that have been ruining U.S. wetlands and driving out native marine plant and animal life.

The secretary of commerce has determined that the 5.3 million people who eluded the Census are not Republican or deserving of representation.People still swim in U.S. coastal waters though the fish, who know better, increasingly don't.Mideast talks are on again, if only to keep Jim Baker busy.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chemical contamination has abated along vast stretches of U.S. coastal waters, but high levels of toxic pollution are still found in major cities and industrial "hot spots," including Baltimore Harbor, the government said yesterday.The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stemmed from a six-year study of chemical traces found in mussels, oysters, bottom-feeding fish and sediment at 287 coastal sites in 23 states, from Maine to Hawaii."There are local pockets [of severe contamination]

Not all global coastal water pollution can be pinned to too much nitrogen, but much of it can. In fact, there is growing scientific concern that the world's coastal waters are symptoms of something even larger gone terribly out of whack.An article published in January by nine scientists in the journal of the Ecological Society of America says that human activities in recent decades have virtually doubled the nitrogen available to life on the planet, "causing serious and long-term environmental consequences across large regions of the earth."

Shipboard open houseAfter completing pollution surveys in the Chester River and Baltimore harbor, the 133-foot research ship Ferrel will tie up next to the National Aquarium and welcome the public from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. today.Operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Ferrel is part of a fleet of research and survey ships based at the agency's Atlantic Marine Center in Norfolk. It generally operates in Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal waters.During its most recent cruise, scientists were sampling bottom sediments and examining bottom-feeding fish trawled from Baltimore-area waters for signs of pollution.

SAN FRANCISCO - A judge has ordered repeal of a federal regulation that has allowed ships to discharge ballast water freely into U.S. harbors and coastal waters. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said last week that the 1972 Clean Water Act prohibits the practice. Government and other reports have identified ballast water as the main source for the spread of invasive foreign species - more than 500 of them - that have been ruining U.S. wetlands and driving out native marine plant and animal life.

The fish kills that have plagued Baltimore's Inner Harbor and nearby creeks over the past two weeks may have eased with the dip in temperatures, but scientists caution that's not the last we've seen of potentially toxic and even deadly algae blooms in area waters. As summer heats up again, potentially dangerous microorganisms could bloom in the wake of algae blamed for suffocating fish from Dundalk to Annapolis. Officials are keeping tabs on the growth of algae around the Chesapeake Bay that have poisoned tens of thousands of fish — including one type found blooming in a Cecil County river that has in the past killed two dogs and can also be fatal to humans.

WITH MORE than half of the U.S. population living along the coasts and another 25 million people estimated to move there over the next 15 years, the scientific evidence is clear that the health and productivity of our coastal waters - in particular our estuaries and bays - are declining. This week, hundreds of scientists, resource managers, environmentalists and business leaders are in Baltimore to search for ways to restore the nation's estuaries and preserve the natural and cultural heritage they support.

Between untangling gill nets and wrestling wooden boxes of flounder and turbot onto the dock, Derc Brunon tells his story -- more and more the story of fishermen all around Europe and the world. His is the last of 15 boats that once fished from this harbor. He used to make a day's work in sight of his little village of Swarzewo, just down the Baltic Sea coast. But now he makes a four-hour round trip to his nets in open waters. If he can hang on a few more years, he'll retire. As recently as 1985, fishermen in some of the small towns along Puck Bay could support a family for a month from one catch of yard-long pike, a prized sport and commercial species that inhabited the clear shallows in the bay's beds of eelgrass.

AYER CREEK - As they have many times during the past three years, a team of Maryland scientists was trolling meandering, marshy waters yesterday, casting handnets for sick menhaden, the 2- to 3-inch silvery bait fish that have come to be seen as a potential warning sign of toxic Pfiesteria piscicida. This time - for the first time - fish with bloody sores and ulcers have begun to turn up in the brackish waters of Maryland's coastal bays near Ocean City. Department of Natural Resources researchers were quick to say there is no evidence the single-celled dinoflagellate, which in 1997 was blamed for one of the state's largest recorded fish kills, has transformed into its toxic form, believed capable of making people sick.

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- Chris Smith and David Friedland are poking holes in the perfectly manicured lawn of Constantine Afansief's home 10 miles west of Barnegat Bay, in Ocean County, N.J. Row upon row of compact new homes line the street. Each was carved out of uplands once thick with pine trees and hardwoods. After the trees were ripped out, the topsoil was scraped and covered with sod. To the untrained eye, the lawn appears perfect. Yet when Smith tries to force a slim metal rod into the grass, to measure its ability to drain, the rod resists after an inch or two. "The soil is really compact here," says Smith, a soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A National Academy of Sciences report identifies nitrogen pollution, the environmental problem that Chesapeake Bay managers have been trying to control for more than a decade, as the most serious threat to coastal waters nationwide. The report by a dozen top marine scientists, made public yesterday, calls for a national strategy to reduce the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus into rivers, streams and bays. The overabundance of these two key nutrients is causing serious environmental damage all along the nation's coast, the report said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Guiding a 19-foot outboard across Narragansett Bay, John Torgan recalls how the deceptively clear water once harbored an aquatic jungle that could tangle the propeller of an unwary boater."

WITH MORE than half of the U.S. population living along the coasts and another 25 million people estimated to move there over the next 15 years, the scientific evidence is clear that the health and productivity of our coastal waters - in particular our estuaries and bays - are declining. This week, hundreds of scientists, resource managers, environmentalists and business leaders are in Baltimore to search for ways to restore the nation's estuaries and preserve the natural and cultural heritage they support.

A National Academy of Sciences report identifies nitrogen pollution, the environmental problem that Chesapeake Bay managers have been trying to control for more than a decade, as the most serious threat to coastal waters nationwide. The report by a dozen top marine scientists, made public yesterday, calls for a national strategy to reduce the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus into rivers, streams and bays. The overabundance of these two key nutrients is causing serious environmental damage all along the nation's coast, the report said.

Not all global coastal water pollution can be pinned to too much nitrogen, but much of it can. In fact, there is growing scientific concern that the world's coastal waters are symptoms of something even larger gone terribly out of whack.An article published in January by nine scientists in the journal of the Ecological Society of America says that human activities in recent decades have virtually doubled the nitrogen available to life on the planet, "causing serious and long-term environmental consequences across large regions of the earth."

Shipboard open houseAfter completing pollution surveys in the Chester River and Baltimore harbor, the 133-foot research ship Ferrel will tie up next to the National Aquarium and welcome the public from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. today.Operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Ferrel is part of a fleet of research and survey ships based at the agency's Atlantic Marine Center in Norfolk. It generally operates in Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal waters.During its most recent cruise, scientists were sampling bottom sediments and examining bottom-feeding fish trawled from Baltimore-area waters for signs of pollution.