MARYLAND

Something’s rotten on the Baltimore area waterfront. Fish are washing ashore by the thousands in a mass die-off that officials say appears to be caused by a weather-driven worsening of the pollution that chronically plagues the Chesapeake Bay. State investigators expanded their probe Wednesday into what they believe are algae-related fish kills in Marley, Furnace and Curtis creeks in Glen Burnie, raising the estimated death toll there tenfold, while finding a new batch of finny carcasses in a Dundalk creek. Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the agency’s fish-kill investigators estimated anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 fish of several species dead in the three creeks in northern Anne Arundel County. Only a day before, Apperson had said investigators figured there were about 6,000 dead. “You could smell it through the neighborhood,” said Rob Rogers, 45, who took a break from work at the Point Pleasant Beach Tavern to describe what he called “unbelievable” conditions on the creeks. Rogers said boaters reported dead fish floating in the water so thick they couldn’t avoid hitting them. The state investigators also found about 300 dead fish in Bullneck Creek in eastern Baltimore County, Apperson said, where residents on Tuesday had reported seeing fish and crabs thrashing on the water’s surface in apparent distress. The investigators measured little oxygen in the creek’s deepest water for fish to breathe. The die-offs are a drastic byproduct of algae blooms that have discolored water in much of the upper bay for over a month now, officials said. “We’ve been having lots of algae blooms in Middle River, in Baltimore harbor, even down on the Severn River,” said Thomas Parham, tidewater ecosystem assessment chief for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “This is earlier than normal,” he added, and while algae blooms are a common phenomenon on the bay in spring and summer, they normally are “not at this level.” – Baltimore Sun