Dead Fish

MARBURY -- On the third day of the four-day Bassmaster Elite Series tournament, Kelly Jordon made a potential life-or-death decision on the water, releasing a bass he had hooked badly and returning to the dock one fish below the minimum. Instead of coming back to haunt him, Jordon's calculation paid off. He avoided the 4-ounce penalty that goes with having a dead fish on the boat and scored public relations points by giving the fish a chance to recover in the cooler water of Nanjemoy Creek.

NANYANG, China - One after another, the pictures piled up on Wei Dongying's simple wooden table, hundreds of them in all, until little of the tabletop was visible. The pictures came with spoken captions, one woman's narrative of the industrial death of a river that for generations sustained this town in eastern China. "The color of the tap water of our house is like this," Wei said, holding a photo of brownish-yellow liquid flowing out of a faucet. Buried underneath her photographs was an X-ray of her ailing mother-in-law, who would soon be diagnosed with a benign liver tumor.

Sun worshipers heading to the beaches in Ocean City this weekend can expect to find fewer dead fish than early this week, when thousands washed ashore after a massive fish kill. Since Tuesday, public works crews driving backhoes have been hauling away truckloads of rotting Atlantic croakers killed by a sudden change in water temperatures. The last of the fish are expected to wash ashore over the next few days, according to officials with the Maryland Department of the Environment. Roughly a million of the pinkish croakers - ranging from 6 inches to 2 feet long - started landing on beaches from Delaware to Virginia on Saturday.

Once upon a time, politicians courted sportsmen. Maybe they weren't true lovers of the outdoors, but pols loved the he-man image and the vote potential that came from talking the talk. So they'd drag themselves out of bed before dawn and wrap themselves in camo or hop in a fishing boat for the photo opportunity. One of my favorite pictures shows an obviously uptight Thomas E. Dewey, New York governor and 1948 presidential candidate, and a trout. Cold fish meets dead fish - talk about separated at birth.

NEW ORLEANS - Deion is neon, but how will he look in camo? We may never know. Deion Sanders, the host of ESPN's New American Sportsman, is an avid fisherman, with a 10-acre lake in his back yard. But hunting? "I can't kill a deer. I can't kill an animal," said Sanders, former NFL cornerback for Atlanta, San Francisco and Dallas, and an outfielder for the Atlanta Braves. Sanders, who will turn 36 on Saturday, went bass fishing at the crack of dawn yesterday at the start of the second day of the Bassmaster Classic, then talked with reporters about his new role.

Cleanup crews hauled away yesterday nearly 800 pounds of dead fish -- including hundreds of baby northern snakeheads -- from three Crofton ponds poisoned by the state to get rid of the finny predators from Asia. State biologists scooping up the bodies of 3 1/2 - to 5-inch-long snakeheads sprayed with a lethal dose of rotenone Wednesday suddenly began netting miniature versions of the dead. When they finished, they had collected 566 of the 1-inch-long fish, mostly in a tight cluster, indicating that they were probably about 2 weeks old and still being guarded by their parents when they died.

About 60,000 fish found dead in Colgate Creek About 60,000 menhaden and a few other fish were found dead yesterday in Colgate Creek in Southeast Baltimore in the largest fish kill of the year, the Maryland Department of the Environment reported. Samples of the dead fish and water were sent to labs for analysis to determine the cause of the kill, but it appears to be natural, said MDE spokesman Richard McIntire. He said the water in the creek did not present any visible signs of a dump or spill.

Carp, those overgrown goldfish that root in the mud of upper Chesapeake Bay tributaries for dinner, are dying off in unprecedented numbers in creeks off the Bush, Bird, Middle, Elk, Sassafras and Choptank rivers. Scientists blame a combination of see-sawing water temperatures, a bacteria they haven't identified and "spawning stress" -- male carps ram females to shake loose eggs, then fertilize them as they settle to the bottom. "The ritual itself is very energetic," says Charles Poukish, who is tracking the deaths for the state Department of the Environment.

The discovery of a parasite responsible for a fish kill in Virginia last month has thrown another variable into attempts to understand the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicida.Although signs pointed to Pfiesteria, Virginia scientists found that Kudoa, a parasite more often associated with fish ponds than Chesapeake Bay tributaries, killed hundreds of menhaden in the James River between Newport News and Hampton Oct. 20-22."The salinity in that part of the river was right [for Pfiesteria]; it was warm and shallow, and it was fall, the same time of the year we had the other events," said Greg C. Garman, a Virginia Commonwealth University fish biologist.

An estimated 1 million dead fish were discovered yesterday in the lower Pocomoke River and one of its creeks. State officials believe it is the largest fish kill in Chesapeake Bay tributaries in a decade.Scientists said they suspect low oxygen is responsible rather than Pfiesteria piscicida, the toxic microorganism that afflicted fish, watermen and the state fishing industry in 1997."The immediate indication is this is not Pfiesteria," Gov. Parris N. Glendening said. "There are no lesions, and there are no fish in distress."