[Note: I have had to asterisk some words of the original to get the content
past the spam filter at Net.bio.net. Use your imagination :-) -- gbr]
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You have been sent this message from g.read at niwa.cri.nz as a courtesy of
the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com
To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7591-2002Jul26.html
Gone Fission: The 'nuclear' Worm
By Ken Ringle
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into that snakehead fishpond
behind the s******g center in Crofton, now comes word of a new threat
slithering into our environment.
It's big (five to seven feet long), it's bad (it can carry cholera), it's hot pink
(nearly fluorescent), and it's coming soon to a bait shop near you. It's the
nuclear Worm (genus Namalycastis), Vietnam's biological revenge for all
that napalm and Agent Orange 30 years ago. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is on the case.
Shipped in via San Francisco, where it's probably just another lifestyle, the
nuclear worm has been welcomed into Chesapeake Bay bait buckets like a
bloodworm wired on V****a. Born among the tropical roots of Vietnamese
coconut palms, it needs no refrigeration and can live for days in icky
contentment on the dashboard of your overheated car.
Rockfish suck it up like sushi. Is this something you're likely to step on
barefoot one night when you're taking out the garbage?
"There are a lot of unanswered questions about these worms that cause us
concern," says Mike Slattery of the Fish and Wildlife Service's Chesapeake
Bay field office in Annapolis. "We caution fishermen not to dump them live
into the bay or its tributaries. But they're native to the tropics and it appears
unlikely they could colonize this area."
That's for sure, says Mike Baldea, owner of Mike's Wholesale Bait in
Gambrills, the Wal-Mart of nuclear worms locally. "They can't survive below
68 degrees," he said. "I shipped in a bunch of them one spring a couple of
years ago. It was an expensive lesson."
Baldea caught the nuclear worm bug six years ago when an importer passed
along some samples in an effort to provide local fishermen with more bait for
the buck. One worm sliced into fish-bite-size pieces can power 40 or more
fishhooks. Since then, he has presided over a nuclear explosion: 25,000
dollars worth of b******s in the big guys last year, including w********g them
to 20 other bait shops in Maryland. That's about 5,000 55-gram containers'
worth. But sometimes that 55 grams contains just a single worm: seven feet
long and as big around as your little finger.
The problem with nuclear worms, says Slattery, is not the worms
themselves but the bacterial baggage they bring with them. Early imports
were packed in material found to contain the pathogen that causes cholera,
though no cases resulted.
Since then, he says, stricter controls and different packing material appears
to have eliminated that particular problem. But tests conducted this spring by
the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Anne Arundel County
found that the worms and their packing material contained three species of
the bacterium vibrio. One of them attacks oysters and can cause serious
illness in people, according to the Baltimore Sun, which has been monitoring
nuclear worm regulating agencies.
Does this mean nuclear diswormament?
"We're not sure how much of a problem that is," Slattery says of the
bacteria. "We need to get all the science in place to find out."
Baldea, whom Slattery praises for cooperating with every aspect of the
nuclear worm investigation, says his Vietnamese import is getting a bad rap.
Biological tests have shown that vibrio bacteria are also present in the
bloodworms fishermen have baited their hooks with for decades, both on the
Chesapeake and elsewhere, he says.
"We've never had any problems from that," he says, "and nobody worries
about it or even points it out. Everybody just picks on the nuke worm."
But Slattery says a mounting ecological concern over invasive species of
plants and animals has caused new attention to the growing business of
imported live bait and its possible environmental fallout. Who knows what
doomsday scenario might be triggered by the brassy minnow (Hybognathus
hankinson), the white sucker (Catostomus commersoni) or the hornyhead
chub (Nocomis bigguttatus)? You can dial up more than 50 Internet sources
for living things that wriggle, creep and crawl. They can be in your mailbox
tomorrow via FedEx.
According to a 2001 report from Slattery's office, live-worm imports alone
were a 70 million dollar b******s in the United States from 1998 to 2000,
though more than 90 percent of that consisted of night crawlers from
Canada. nuclear worms are a relative drop in the bucket, he says, and
nobody really knows much about them.
Where did they get their name? Baldea's bait shop, Slattery says: "That was
a bit of m******g genius from Mike."
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