Ocean

An article in The Sun Sunday incorrectly identified the county where Ocean City is located. The resort town is in Worcester County.The Sun regrets the error.OCEAN CITY -- For decades, the building boom pushed its way inexorably northward on this narrow, 10-mile strip of sand on the Atlantic Ocean.Old-timers like Granville Trimper, 65, who ran boardwalk rides at 10 and who now owns a downtown amusement park, watched a sleepy town of dirt roads and summer cottages transformed.High-rise condos and sprawling shopping malls, bayside bars and docks for speedboats, miniature golf courses ruled by gorillas and dinosaurs replaced the barren sand dunes at a ferocious pace.

OCEAN CITY -- Two hours earlier, a happy angler had walked down the gangway from the OC Princess with a noteworthy catch, a 14-pound, 8-ounce tautog caught over one of the wrecks offshore.But, by 4 p.m. Sunday, a half-dozen crew members were completing a transformation of the OC Princess. The largest and fastest party fishing boat in town was being gussied up to take several dozen people offshore on a guided nature tour.So, what's the big deal? What's to see, you say. Waves. Fishing boats.

CHURCHVILLE, Va. -- No farmer would look at a pasture full of starving cows and refuse to fertilize his grass, especially if he could afford the fertilizer. Does the same ethic apply to fish in the ocean?California's Moss Landing Marine Laboratory recently dumped half a ton of iron filings into the Pacific Ocean off the Galapagos Islands.This ''fertilizer'' produced a fortyfold increase in phytoplankton over a 200-square-mile area of the ocean!Phytoplankton are the ocean's primary food source.

JIM MATHIAS, the Democratic mayor of Ocean City, was driving to Salisbury yesterday for a luncheon with a Republican women's group, when he was asked, "What do they want to talk to you about?" "Like everybody else," he laughed. "They're demanding better weather." They'll have to get in line to put in their order. In the first 27 days of May, there was one recorded day of sunshine. There were six days of mixed clouds and sun. Every other day, say the drudges who follow such things for a living, the weather was rainy or cloudy.

Lately, most of the news from Washington has been dominated by partisan fights and acrimony. However, there is one issue receiving bipartisan support - the fate of America's oceans. The Senate recently approved the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act by unanimous consent. This development comes not a moment too soon. Destructive practices by the commercial fishing industry are depleting fish populations and devastating key ocean habitat. Equipped with high-tech fleets, fishing industry conglomerates have become so voracious that some fish populations have disappeared within just a few years.

MY RECENT trip "down the ocean" was supposed to be relaxing. I anticipated introspective walks on the beach, visits to my favorite used bookstore, a cooling dip in the surf and lots of tennis. The reality was different.In years to come, I'll refer to this trip as the vacation of the plagues. There were three, starting with the heat. I've never been one to complain about hot, humid weather. It used to be that during July and August, while the rest of my family crowded under the beach umbrella I'd spread out my towel.

In Ocean City, a resort town almost completely surrounded by water, you can find water sports anywhere -- even on Coastal Highway, where rainy day drivers will attest that just traveling the puddle-scarred road is one kind of water sport.Vacationers with more traditional recreational aims will find Ocean City full of people who want to get them in, on or over the ocean or bays, usually in the form of parasailing, jet skiing or windsurfing.Joe and Tracey Emm operate Island Watersports (289-2896)

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blus.If good vacations are anything like good weddings, Ocean City and its vacation visitors will be a blissful match in 1991. Maryland's grand summer resort town is sporting all its charms this Memorial Day weekend, as yet another beach season laps at our feet.For something old, Ocean City's dowry offers the ageless Atlantic Ocean.But there is something new in Maryland's effort to hold the sea at arm's lenght: a 3-foot-high, concrete-sheathed steel bulkhead.

OCEAN CITY -- The smell of french fries filled the air, racks of tie-dyed outfits beckoned from boardwalk shops and two college women rated the attractiveness of male passers-by.It's beginning to look a lot like summer here.Yesterday, merchants prepared for what they expect to be an onslaught of tourists this Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the summer resort season and one of their busiest weekends of the year.Some 250,000 vacationers are expected to flock to the beach this weekend, and state highway officials just hope people driving to the resort don't all leave at the same time tomorrow.

A conch fisherman died and his crew member was rescued Monday afternoon when their boat sank off the southeast coast of Ocean City, the Coast Guard said yesterday.Chief Lewis T. Fisher, officer in charge of the Coast Guard station in Ocean City, identified the dead man as John Mitchell, 27, of West Ocean City, Worcester County. Mitchell's body was being transported to the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore last night for an autopsy.The survivor, rescued by a passing fishing vessel, was identified by Fisher as Micah Fooks, 27, of Pittsville, Wicomico County.