Biologists Declare Victory In Pond

1,000 Snakeheads Die in Crofton

The story of the summer, the story of the fish that walked and had everyone talking, ended yesterday as biologists officially -- or at least very, very hopefully -- declared the snakehead dead.

More than 1,000 babies and six adult snakeheads have turned up, belly-up, in a Crofton pond. Those numbers alone -- more than 1,000 babies -- stunned biologists. "That clearly shows how prolific these suckers are," Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Heather Lynch said.

They were so prolific that it took two weeks -- instead of the anticipated seven days -- to kill off the voracious Chinese fish. "We can declare success now," Lynch said yesterday. "It's been an extremely efficient operation."

To celebrate, the biologists began the process of returning the notorious pond to its former, untoxic self yesterday by tossing in 500 pounds of potassium permanganate, neutralizing the poisonous rotenone that, when it was mixed into the four-acre pond on Sept. 4, began suffocating the fish.

Their dead bodies were found "mostly on the banks," Lynch said, as though they'd been trying to crawl out of the water.

Biologists had worried that the predatory fish would slither out of the no-name pond into the nearby Little Patuxent River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem there.

Concerns grew two weeks ago when another snakehead was found in the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, but that one turned out to be a more tropical variety of snakehead, one that could never withstand even a relatively mild mid-Atlantic winter.

Even the appearance of that snakehead, Lynch is convinced, was just a hoax.

It "was obviously an aquarium discard, like someone did it for attention," she said, adding that by now, anyone who chucked a snakehead into the wild would have to be an idiot, "given the education we've all received this summer on snakeheads."

Such education extends all the way into the federal bureaucracy, where an anti-snakehead regulation is wending its way through the Interior Department. In about a week, if all goes as expected, it will become highly illegal to import live snakeheads or their eggs into the United States.

It will also be illegal to cross state lines with the menacing, ichthyoid cargo. Violations could bring a fine of up to $5,000 or six months in jail.

And so, the summertime saga of the northern snakehead ends not with a bang, but with one last, hopeful sigh. Are we likely to ever see such snakehead hoopla again? Lynch is asked.

"Nope!" Of this, she sounds sure.