Fish

A new federal report finds toxic contamination remains widespread in the Chesapeake Bay, with severe impacts in some places, which health and environmental advocates say lends support to their push in Annapolis for legislative action on pesticides and other hazardous chemicals. The 184-page report, recently posted on the website of the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay program , notes that nearly three-fourths of the bay's tidal waters are "fully or partially impaired" by toxic chemicals, with contamination severe enough in some areas that people are warned to limit how many fish they eat from there.  The chemicals tainting fish are mainly mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.  Once widely used in electrical equipment, PCBs were banned years ago over health concerns, but residues linger and continue to show up in fish tissue.  "They may be coming down - I can't say they're not - but we know they're not coming down quickly," said Greg Allen, an EPA scientist and the lead author of the interagency report, which was produced in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service . Contamination is severe in a handful of "hot spots" around the bay, including Baltimore's harbor, largely a legacy of past industrial and shipping activity.

At a historic meeting in Baltimore recently, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the fisheries management body representing 15 states along the Eastern Seaboard, resolved to cap the harvest of menhaden at 20 percent less than the average landings of 2009-2011. On hand at the meeting were menhaden industry lobbyists and executives as well as deck hands, recreational anglers, state marine resource officials and conservationists - a dizzying array of stakeholders, each presenting arguments bolstered by evidence designed to make their opponents seem unreasonable.

While the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay requires attention from all the half-dozen states in the 64,000-square-mile watershed, there is one step that must be taken almost entirely by one state alone. When the Virginia Assembly reconvenes for its annual 45-day legislative session in January, it needs to impose a strict quota on the harvest of menhaden. Perhaps no species is more important to the bay — and to the major East Coast fisheries in general — than the lowly menhaden, a small, oily fish that is familiar to Maryland anglers primarily as bait.

Well, you've done it again. Made it through another, undoubtedly hectic year. Almost. A time to look back and to look ahead. And who better to do both with than dear friends and neighbors (maybe even family.) To mark the close of 2012 (and good riddance), may we suggest an easy to arrange New Year's Eve "Span the Years" gathering? This one is built for speed and endurance featuring as it will a smorgasbord type buffet to while away the pre-midnight hours, and a mini-brunch to send your dear ones home happy after greeting 2013.

With catch limits on Atlantic menhaden being tightened to end overfishing, a new study is getting under way to look at just how many of the little oily fish need to be left in the water to maintain the health of other fish in the Chesapeake Bay and along the East Coast. Under a $320,000 grant from the Lenfest Foundation , fisheries scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science plan to investigate where the balance needs to be struck between fishing for menhaden and preserving them for their value in the ecosystem.

In a move hailed by conservationists, East Coast regulators ordered Friday a 20 percent reduction in the commercial catch of Atlantic menhaden, despite warnings that the cutback would cost some fishermen their jobs and may affect crabbers in the Chesapeake Bay. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, meeting before a packed ballroom of partisans in a Southeast Baltimore hotel, ended years of debate over whether the fish were in trouble and...

From Virginia, New Jersey and points in between, busloads of fishermen are coming to Baltimore for a showdown Friday over how much to curb the industrial-scale harvest of a small, oily fish that figures prominently in the seafood industry, though no one eats it directly. It also is an important food source for fish and wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay and beyond. After decades of study and debate, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates near-shore fishing, is meeting here to adopt a first-ever plan to limit the catch of menhaden, the most intensely harvested fish on the East Coast and second-biggest catch nationwide.

Six people have been charged since the start of this month with illegally catching striped bass in federal waters more than three miles off the coast of Ocean City , according to the Maryland Natural Resources Police. Police said the recreational fishers had caught the fish, all more than 28 inches in length, in what is known as the Exclusive Economic Zone - a designated area of waters between 3 and 200 miles off the United States coastline where the federal government holds jurisdiction.

Wait, I thought the Governor was supposed to be some super a-hole, like in the comic books, where he was a raping, murdering, torturing psychopath? In Sunday night's episode of The Walking Dead , we finally meet the gov', and he comes across as a stand-up dude, at first. He brings Andrea and Michonne into his charming little town of Woodbury (population 73, soon to be 74), sees to it that Andrea gets medical treatment for her persistent flu-like symptoms, sets them up in a nice little bed and breakfast room with running water, peaches, bottled water and fresh clothes, and feeds them strangled eggs and mystery tea. He even offers them food, ammo, meds and a new car if they insist on leaving!

Cary deRussy, the former publisher of Fishing in Maryland magazine, died of emphysema complications Oct. 10 at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin. The former Mays Chapel resident was 70. Born Wilson Cary Nicholas deRussy in Baltimore and raised in Ruxton, he was a 1960 graduate of St. Paul's School, where he was on the wrestling, cross country and tennis teams. He earned a photography degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1964. Family members said that during the Vietnam War, he joined the CIA and spent two years in Saigon working with the Special Forces.