"We really can't say what that source is," Michael said.
As for Chaconas, he said he's burning more gas trying to find new fishing spots -- and also stretching his volume of jokes. There's a new one about the northern snakehead and President Bush asking for help with a "fish of mass destruction."
"That's what Chesapeake Bay is now, a big septic tank," says waterman Elmer Evans of Smith Island, working in his crab shanty.
(Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
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_____Chesapeake Bay_____
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Md. Watermen Mull Suing Over Bay (The Washington Post, Jul 28, 2004)
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EPA Proposal Would Limit Sewage Plant Pollutants (The Washington Post, Jul 26, 2004)
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Bay Group Toughens Its Stance On Cleanup (The Washington Post, Jul 25, 2004)
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Oxygen Levels In Bay Disputed (The Washington Post, Jul 23, 2004)
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Bay Pollution Progress Overstated (The Washington Post, Jul 18, 2004)
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Recent News
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Kidding aside, Chaconas said he believes the algae might be worse.
"A lot of fishermen are more concerned with this than they are with snakeheads," he said, "because this has an immediate effect."
Aug. 4: Severn River
The fish-finder told the story.
John Page Williams, a naturalist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, parked his boat upstream from Annapolis and watched the squiggles that represented fish on his small, black-and-white screen.
"Almost everything's above 30 feet here," Williams said, meaning most of the fish were less than 30 feet deep. They were avoiding the bottom 20 feet of water.
As Williams lowered a dissolved-oxygen meter over the side, it was easy to see why. At 30 feet, the level of dissolved oxygen dropped below three milligrams per liter. Most fish can't survive with less than that.
" '74, '64, '54, there would have been oxygen all the way down there" to the bottom, he said.
Among the river's casualties: the yellow perch. Once a common fish here, its population has declined, and scientists believe that its young are endangered by areas of low oxygen.
The Severn doesn't have much pollution from sewage treatment or farmland. Instead, its nutrients seep in from the bay or wash down from the picturesque neighborhoods that line its banks.
Frederick L. Kelly, a lawyer who is known as the Severn "Riverkeeper," has tried to get his neighbors to build "living shorelines" -- man-made marshes that absorb fertilizer and other nutrients before they wash into open water.
But he knows there's much work ahead: He can still look out from the deck of his boat and see fields of green, well-fertilized grass.
"Look at this nice, cultured lawn," Kelly said, picking one opulent house with an American flag out front. "That's what we've got to stop."
