Spawn of Snakehead?

Suspicious Baby Fish Heighten Fears Among Md. Officials, Scientists

Beneath the murky water that bubbles and smells like a cauldron of menace, where the blue dragonflies hover and the bottom tugs at unsuspecting feet, the monster fish may be multiplying.

So went the murmurings yesterday on the banks of Crofton Pond in Anne Arundel County, where a throng of TV crews and eager teenage anglers gathered to hear word that the voracious northern snakehead seems to have spawned six baby fish.

The news that a fisherman had netted the tiny creatures has further alarmed state officials, who were already mulling what to do about the weird, toothy, Asian walking fish, capable of consuming a pondful of fish and then limping along on its strong pectoral fins and belly to other waters. The species can also breathe air and survive for days on land if it stays wet.

"Eradication was our goal before. Now it's even more so," said Eric Schwaab, head of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, which announced yesterday the formation of a task force to weigh options including poison, explosives or electric shock to eliminate the fish.

An angler caught an adult and threw it back in May, but not before showing state environmentalists a photo of the fish, later identified as a northern snakehead, native to China and prized as a delicacy there and in other Asian countries. State officials had hoped it was just a fluke -- perhaps dumped from an outgrown aquarium or purchased from a market and released as part of an offering practiced by some Eastern religions.

Then last week, Crofton resident Joe Gillespie hooked another big one. And on Monday, he said, he spotted the babies leaping like fat worms onto lily pads to grab insects, then slithering back into the water.

Alarmed experts said one of the babies, presented yesterday in a water-filled plastic bag, has the same lean lines, jutting lower jaw and frilly fins along its back and stomach as the adult fish.

Further testing will be done to make certain of the babies' species.

The discovery prompted state wildlife experts to accelerate plans to deal with the potential hazard.

If the babies were caught in the pond, as the fisherman reports, and prove to be snakeheads, that means that there were at least two adult snakeheads and that they, or others, have already spawned, officials said.

"This would seem to indicate that reproduction has occurred and that we could be dealing with hundreds of young fish here," the DNR's Schwaab said.

Officials fear that if the highly predatory snakehead, which eats its young and can grow to be several feet in length, got into the state's rivers and other bodies of water, it could decimate native fish species.

"It does not have characteristics of other fish in Maryland," DNR fish biologist Steve Early said yesterday as he held up the bag containing the two-inch-long fry. "It's a combination of the fin shape, size and the body coloration, and general appearance of it."

"All of the characteristics, and especially the coloration, are just real consistent with the literature on snakeheads," he said of the baby.