Word: shellfisher
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There was plenty of other fuel for worry: reports of inexplicable fish kills, warnings against eating shellfish, tales of lakes and forests dying from acid rain. Who could forget that up to 12% of all U.S. houses suffer unsafe radon exposure? That by sending up chlorofluorocarbons used in coolants, man is still destroying the ozone layer that protects against ultraviolet rays...
Some kinds of algae contain toxic chemicals that are deadly to marine life. When carcasses of more than a dozen whales washed up on Cape Cod last fall, their deaths were attributed to paralytic shellfish poisoning that probably passed up the food chain through tainted mackerel consumed by the whales. Carpets of algae can turn square miles of water red, brown or yellow. Some scientists speculate that the account in Exodus 7: 20 of the Nile's indefinitely turning red may refer to a red tide...
...killed several thousand mullet and all but wiped out the scallop population. Reason: the responsible species, Ptychodiscus brevis, contains a poison that causes fish to bleed to death. Brown tides, unknown to Long Island waters before 1985, have occurred every summer since; they pose a constant threat to valuable shellfish beds...
...jurisdiction of a bewildering (and often conflicting) array of governmental bodies. One prime example of this confusion, reports TIME Houston Bureau Chief Richard Woodbury, is found in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico region. There both the federal Food and Drug Administration and a state agency regulate the harvesting of shellfish. A third agency, the state's health department, surveys and samples the water and shellfish. And another state body sets the guidelines for opening or closing shellfish beds. Complains Douglas Rader of the Environmental Defense Fund: "The crazy mix of agencies hurts the prospects for good management...
...oceans. That means pollution is bound to get worse. Warns Clifton Curtis, president of the Oceanic Society, a Washington-based environmental organization: "We can expect to see an increase in the chronic contamination of coastal waters, an increase in health advisories and an increase in the closing of shellfish beds and fisheries." ) Those are grim tidings indeed, for both the world's oceans and the people who live by them...