Quote:
Originally Posted by firstdown
I can remember the Kepone scare back in the 70's like it was yesterday. My parents at the time lived on the Elizabeth River and as a kid all I did was crab and fish in the summer. Then came the Kepone scare and no one would touch the seafood. After a couple of years people figured out you had to eat like 20 fish or crabs a day for like 20 years to even have any risk at all from Kepone. I remember my parents having guess from out of town and we would eat crabs and the people would start asking about Kepone, We would say "oh, its ok to eat the crabs" as we would shake now and then. It became more of a joke as the years went on and it was actually good for the numbers of crabs and fish. In the 80's after they lifted most of the restrictions crabbing was great. We could catch a 5 to 6 dozen fat jimmy's in an hour or so. Compare that with today and it would take me a week to catch that many crabs. The state does a poor job now and it could only get worse if the feds gain control.
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FD i will defer to you on anything and everything fishing and water related but this post is what i was getting at.
i know around bmore we get algea blooms from the unnaturally high levels of nitrogen (?) that get dumped into the water from industrial plants. book july-august for another fish kill bloom in the inner harbor.
i know the strippers are harder and harder to find up where i am, with their seasonal runs now being effected by changing water tempetures.
i know oysters used to be plentiful in the bay but now they only survive on federally funded sanctuaries.
MD is also looking to use fed money to create soft shell crab sanctuaries.
it just seems MD has been a bunch of talk and no action until we got this influx of fed money the past year or so.
i think the state does a poor job now b/c states and cities (like maryland and baltimore) have very tight budgets. if baltimore is cutting police and firefighters, you best believe money for environmental efforts isnt going to be handed out.
states have too much on their plate and all they do is juggle a budget. i would like the fed gov't to step in and help the states with finances to achieve goals like cleaning up the bay.