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Article: Filter it with billions and billions of oysters: how to revive the Chesapeake Bay. (restoring the oyster population may help prevent further Pfiesteria piscicida outbreaks)(Outlook 1998)(Brief Article)(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- December 29, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The sight of oozing sores has a way of making people sit up and take notice. And that's what happened last summer when thousands of fish in a few Chesapeake Bay tributaries began turning up dead, covered with gory lesions. The culprit turned out to be toxic algae known as Pfiesteria piscicida, and this "cell from hell" soon became the suspected cause of distressing symptoms--including nausea, fatigue, and memory loss--reported by dozens of bay watermen. Local seafood sales plummeted as pfiesteria hysteria added to the public's growing belief that America's largest estuary was in serious ecological trouble.
The pfiesteria outbreak was all the more disturbing because ...