Spawning

HOUSTON -- Like many fish stories, this is a tale about the ones that got away. So many, in fact -- about 1 million -- that the FBI is investigating.Sometime between December and January, $100,000 worth of baby catfish, or fingerlings, were stolen from spawning ponds near Danbury, a small town on the upper Texas coast about 50 miles southwest of here.The theft was not noticed until late last month, when workers at Anat, an aquaculture company, were rounding up fingerlings for a sale and discovered that three of the company's spawning ponds had been emptied.

Gourmet hot dogs must be doing huge business in Baltimore. A year after Ryan Perlberg, co-owner of Stuggy's, opened Rye, a cocktail bar, he's launching Willow. The new bar/restaurant will focus on infusions by Rye mixologist Doug Atwell and revisionist Mexican by Stuggy's chef Benjamin Polson; it's expected to open in late June, Perlberg said. With Rye and Stuggy's beside it, Willow gives Perlberg control over a small fiefdom in Fells. And Perlberg is working on re-organizing ownership of the venues under one partnership tentatively called RP Restaurant Group; he co-owns Rye and Stuggy's under different partnerships.  The group name has not been registered yet with the state, records show; Perlberg says paperwork was filed this week.

WASHINGTON -- Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the Indian software giant Infosys, gave me a tour the other day of his company's wood-paneled global conference room in Bangalore. It looks a lot like a beautiful tiered classroom, with a massive wall-size screen at one end and cameras in the ceiling so that Infosys can hold a simultaneous global teleconference with its U.S. innovators, its Indian software designers and its Asian manufacturers. "We can have our whole global supply chain on the screen at the same time," holding a virtual meeting, explained Mr. Nilekani.

About 150 people gathered Sunday night to begin planning Occupy Baltimore, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that started in New York two weeks ago and have now spread to other cities. Meeting at the 2640 Space on St. Paul Street in Charles Village, people there talked about logistics for an event - visibility and social significance among them. When a Baltimore Sun reporter told organizers she was there, the group asked that she leave. The planning meeting came a day after 700 protesters in New York were arrested for marching in the car lanes of theBrooklyn Bridge.

Lumpy gray sky. Bullying winds. The Chesapeake Bay the color of cheap milk chocolate. The day after Jeanne blew through was not the best day to celebrate a golden anniversary at Sandy Point State Park, but there we were Wednesday just the same. Given regime changes and budget cuts and all that, not many things started by government survive 50 years. So the fact that Department of Natural Resources biologists have been able to track the population of baby rockfish since Theodore McKeldin was governor is quite an accomplishment.

The 1991 rockfish season has started. No, not the rockfish catching season, the rockfish spawning season.Water temperature in the Choptank hit the mid-60s earlier this week, and the mama rockfish started spewing out eggs.The stripers enter the Chesapeake in March and move toward the spawning reaches of their home river systems. Most biologists believe that if a rockfish was spawned in the Choptank River, it will spawn inthe Choptank when it reaches maturity. Some believe that the rockfish from one river system are genetically a little different than rockfish from other areas.

The net is set, then pulled, sieving the shallows of the Choptank River in anticipation of the baby striped bass, or rockfish, that will tell the success or failure of this spring's spawning.Even a dozen of the 2-inch "young of year" would be a satisfying haul for state Department of Natural Resources biologists -- well above the average of around eight baby stripers per sample their survey has averaged since 1954.If the rockfish in their spawning had gotten obscenely lucky, as they do in certain, rare summers, the net might hold a few hundred.

If the oyster once was king of Chesapeake Bay, the shad was queen. For centuries, residents of the bay region - first native Americans, then European colonists - celebrated the arrival of spring by feasting on the bony but succulent fish and the roe, or eggs, produced by spawning females.During the Revolutionary War, salted shad helped save George Washington's troops from starvation as they wintered at Valley Forge, some accounts say.In the 1800s, shad were so abundant and cheap that farmers along the Susquehanna River used them to fertilize crops.

ANNAPOLIS -- Earlier in the day, once the wind had dropped away to a zephyr and the Chesapeake Bay had settled into wavelets and a persistent swell from the northeast, a pair of sleek rockfish had been brought to the boat, one about 24 inches and the other a few inches longer.Neither was close to the spring trophy minimum of 36 inches, but then neither was to be sneered at.According to an early season count by the Department of Natural Resources, only 410 trophy stripers had been caught by May 10, which was 10 days earlier.

It is a long swim to Binghamton, N.Y., but the determined travelers are getting closer.American shad -- that slightly oily, bony fish once as popular as the blue crab -- is making a comeback in a portion of its 500 miles of historic spawning ground along the Susquehanna River.With the completion this spring of a $12 million fish lift -- the equivalent of an elevator -- at the Conowingo Dam, the number of the prized species to cross the 100-foot-tall structure doubled to 27,227 since the last spawning season.

In a recent Sun op-ed piece ("What is killing jobs," Aug. 27) a writer parroted the propaganda spread by proponents of outsourcing - that jobs are sent overseas because Americans aren't well versed in math and science and can't compete in the high tech realm. Except most jobs lost to overseas markets are not high tech at all. Politicians can blather about creating biotech and high tech jobs and training all of America for them. The truth is that these jobs will barely make a dent on overall unemployment.

Jill Smokler just might be Baltimore's biggest unknown celebrity. Few recognize her tightly coiled curls, her peanut-butter-eating children, her tired dog. But online, thousands upon thousands of mothers grasp onto her every word. And on Twitter, nearly 155,000 people follow her, more, by far, than Baltimore's mayor, Maryland's governor, chef Duff Goldman and the Ravens' Ray Lewis - together. In the virtual world she's a well-known and influential voice. Yet in the real one, you'd walk right past her in Whole Foods without realizing.

While it is commendable that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates weeps for his dead soldiers ("Gates showing job's toll at end," June 20), his tears are nothing compared to the millions shed by families, and let us not forget the children weeping here and abroad, since the United States went to war in late 2001. If Dick Cheney had not wanted to invade Iraq already by the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, and George W. Bush and Barack Obama had glanced at a few history books and thought about Afghanistan in connection with the experiences of Britain, Russia, and even the U.S. there during the last century, perhaps Mr. Gates and the rest of us who grieve would not be weeping now. Laurie Taylor-Mitchell, Towson

Fabienne Doucet is haunted by the stories of the women and children she has met who are still living in camps one year after an earthquake reduced the island nation of Haiti to rubble. There's the former accounting student who apologizes for crying as she describes being gang-raped by four men. There's the young girl who was beaten so brutally she can no longer have children. And there's the mother who was so grateful to receive clothing for her babies that she insisted on washing Doucet's feet.

Teachers should be able to glean a couple of fashion tips this season as the hit TV show "Glee" returns. The show's fashion — especially that of guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury [played by actress Jayma Mays] — has captured audience members as much as the punchy dialogue and toe-tapping renditions of catchy pop songs. Pillsbury's prim yet fashionable wardrobe also inspired the Website "What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear?" In less than a year, the site has attracted 1 million visitors and was recently mentioned in People magazine.

A call for legislative term limits has once again entered the political fray in Maryland. Among the more vocal proponents are state Sen. Andrew Harris, a Republican candidate for the First District congressional seat, and any number of General Assembly candidates. Although talk of term limits seemed to peak in the 1990s, its revival is hardly surprising considering the difficult economic times and the rise of populist candidates seeking to tap into voter frustration. Term limits have a certain appeal — if one's chief desire is to throw the rascals out. The problem is that term limits tend not to accomplish what its supporters are seeking.

Rockfish enthusiasts got some good news and bad news Thursday when the Department of Natural Resources released the 1990 Striped Bass Young-of-Year Index.The report indicates how well this year's striped bass survived the spawning process. Biologists say the index is an indicator of relative abundance and is the best tool we have to determine the strength of the year-class. The biologists also say that by the time the year-class develops into the juvenile stage -- where they look like fish -- the year-class is established.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - In the face of economic and environmental warning signs, state fishery authorities have taken the drastic step of declaring a vast 665-square-mile fishermen-free sanctuary through the heart of the lower Chesapeake Bay to provide safe passage for the millions of female blue crabs now on the southward trek to their high-salt spawning grounds. The marine police are on the prowl by boat and airplane to keep poachers from the female crabs that are the key to maintaining what has been the Chesapeake region's most lucrative fishery yield.

Since Sunday's vote in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform, at least 10 Democrats who voted for the bill have received threats. Some have had bricks thrown through their office doors. In Virginia, a tea party protester published what he thought was a Democratic congressman's home address and urged people to drop by and show their opposition. Soon thereafter, a propane line at the house, which belongs to the congressman's brother, was cut, and a threatening letter was sent to the home.