Anglers Taking Rockfish Fears in Stride

He kept those bookings, telling his clients that the fish were safe and that the hoopla would blow over. But nobody new has called, and last week he sat in his bay-front den, running his finger across an empty calendar. He's booked seven trips between now and early May, half as many charters as he usually has. Although that's enough for a retired teacher who long ago decided he wanted the Becky-D to himself on weekends, it's still sad, he said.

"This certainly hurts the industry," he said. To him, mycobacteriosis in rockfish is a lesson in publicity-produced panic. But it's a lesson in the changing nature of the bay, too. Indeed, Darwin says, "I don't think there's a captain in the bay that wouldn't like to see this corrected."

By midday, Krissoff's girlfriend, Wynee Hawk, was braced at the back of the boat, pole bent into a U with the weight of the striper breaking the surface in a flash of silver and spray. "I don't think I've ever caught a fish this big before," she said, swaying forward while reeling hard, then leaning back, pulling. At 33 inches-plus, it was a keeper, but they released it. "I'm not worried about eating rockfish," Krissoff said. "I'm more concerned with the big picture," which for him means "mankind has exceeded the capacity of the bay. I'm sympathetic to the watermen, very much so. But their making a living is a small issue compared with the survival of the estuary."

There are many commercial anglers who'd take issue with Krissoff. Every early spring, a half-dozen or so of them fish near Norfolk, looking for the big female "cow" stripers entering the bay from the Atlantic. But this year, just as the rockfish hit, the bad news did, too, and the price paid at the dock dived from $2.50 to $1.50 a pound in two days.

L.D. Amory & Co. in Hampton has bought fish from anglers here since 1917. Charles Amory remembers decades ago, when netters stood on the beach stacking bass like cordwood. Later came the shortages and the moratorium. He remembers fish kills supposedly caused by Pfiesteria, an alga, and Kepone, a poison dumped into the James River, not far from his business.

In other words, mycobacteriosis "is just one in the line" of troubles, he said. "The whole ecosystem is different than what it used to be."

Fish sales boom at Easter, and Amory would pay more for rockfish now. But nobody's selling. "Several [anglers] quit when the price went down," he said. "If the market rebounds, they may start back again," he hopes, in time for winter holiday dinners.

Amory wonders how newspapers could kick a wounded industry with news about a disease he hasn't seen much of. But he also wonders why it happened in the first place.

"This is the first fishery that's ever been completely restored," he said. "And they don't know what to do."

By 2 p.m., the Full Moon had three fish in the cooler, the biggest a fat-bellied 37-incher. None had the sores that point to a disease nobody here wants to see and some don't want to discuss.

Krissoff turned his wheel toward home. "If the scientists think there's some way to fix it, you'd have to support it," he said. Even if "we all have to make some sacrifices."

Staff writer Daniel de Vise contributed to this report.

To see the day's catch and an interview with Mike Krissoff, go tohttp://www.washingtonpost.com.