Pollutants, runoff threaten fabled Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem

SOLOMONS, Md. — As the sun rose on Chesapeake Bay, waterman Larry "Boo" Powley was still on the docks, repairing holes in the nets he had strung near the shore. Long strands of anthozoan, a plant that looks like seaweed and thrives in polluted waters, had tangled the nets and weighed them down so much that they tore.

Bobby Darnell already was out checking the crab pots he had set in the waters around Calvert Cliffs. There, he found another sign of an ecosystem out of balance: blue crabs clinging with death grips to the inside of the metal cages, trying desperately to escape the oxygen-poor water.

The southern Maryland watermen were witnessing what an Environmental Protection Agency report released this week showed in stark relief: Pollution and sediment have left nearly half the water in the Chesapeake Bay so depleted of oxygen this summer that it cannot sustain aquatic life.

Scientists say winter snowstorms and above-average rainfall have washed more suburban wastewater and farmland fertilizer into the bay, producing algae blooms, crippling fisheries and creating a "dead zone" larger than ever recorded. Data from the EPA's bay program office and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science indicate that the zone covers a 250-square-mile area extending from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the James River in Virginia some 100 miles to the south.

With the summer not even over, some scientists and environmentalists fear this year could be one of the worst on record in terms of water clarity and oxygen levels in the bay.

"If this were a healthy ecosystem, we could weather a wet season like we've had without the kinds of effects we've seen," said J. Charles Fox, vice president of communications for the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. For watermen, the evidence is everywhere: They have watched crabs scramble atop cork buoys to gulp air. Others reported seeing what's known as a crab jubilee, a rare phenomenon that conjures up merry images but in reality is a dramatic distress signal that occurs when crabs scramble onto beaches and jetties to avoid choking in oxygen-starved waters.

Powley's crew threw out dozens of dead fish caught in its nets Wednesday. As of 9 a.m., the deck of Darnell's low-slung boat, Amanda, contained only two bushels of female crabs and one-third of a bushel of large males. In better years, he might have landed 10 bushels in the same time period. On Wednesday, he said, he would be lucky to cover the costs of running the boat and paying his two mates.

Even as those who work on the bay put more effort into hauling in smaller catches, much of the evidence points to the fact that the ailing estuary is showing no marked improvement.

A type of algae that produces a toxin fatal to some fish bloomed in unprecedented high concentrations in June on the lower Patuxent River. Within days, more than 100 species were found dead. The algae, known as Karlodinium micrum, burns holes in fish gills.

Across the bay, scientists have recorded a rainbow of algae blooms — at higher concentrations in some cases, and across broader areas — than ever seen there.

Blue-green algae, which can sicken humans and kill animals that ingest it, has coated waterways throughout the northern bay this year. Red tides, linked to respiratory irritation in people and to deaths in clams and other species, have cropped up in places where they hadn't been seen before.

Throughout the coastal bays and inland lagoons, sea lettuce, an aquatic weed, has bloomed in abundance, choking off underwater life. A brown tide, like the kind blamed for the collapse of the Long Island scallop industry in the 1980s, has bloomed in such high concentrations that it has turned at least one waterway black.

Scientists attribute the proliferation of blooms to the abnormally wet weather in the mid-Atlantic region, which follows a three-year drought in which nutrients had time to build up on land. Now, those nutrients are being washed into the bay with every pulse of rain.

As part of a decade-long effort to reduce the flow of pollutants into the bay, Maryland officials have pledged to address the two chief sources: sewage-treatment plants and farm fertilizer.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, has advocated improving old and inefficient wastewater-treatment plants, but the upgrades could cost state and local governments billions of dollars.

A 1997 state law requires farmers to document their use of fertilizer and put as little as possible on their fields. Many farmers, though, have not prepared new plans for using less fertilizer and, at a summit this week, they urged Ehrlich to use incentives, rather than penalties, to encourage participation.