A petition against the Maryland Department of the Environment has the potential to stop fishing with chum in the Chesapeake Bay. If successful, the petition will radically change angling for the state fish, the striped bass. It will also anger sportfishing captains and anglers.
The petition was submitted to the MDE earlier this week by Capt. Norman Bartlett, aided by Erik Bluemel, a staff attorney at the Institute for Public Representation at the Georgetown University Law Center, and others.
The argument by Bartlett and the Law Center is that dispensing anything, including chum, into bay waters is a violation of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) and thus illegal without a permit. Chum is defined as any natural, synthetic or fish matter regularly released into water to attract fish to better enable anglers to catch them. In typical cases, it is often ground-up menhaden mixed into a soup-like slurry and ladled from a boat to attract easily caught stripers. It is a popular summer light-tackle fishing method for striped bass.
The effort is a “petition for a rule making,” according to Bluemel, who noted that chum is not specifically mentioned in the listing of CWA banned substances, which “prohibits discharge of a pollutant without a permit.”
In the petition, Bartlett is asking for a clarification as to whether or not chum is a pollutant. The MDE has 60 days to respond. If the ruling defines chum as a pollutant, the next step could dictate the Department of Natural Resources to rule that chum is an illegal fishing method and thus banned in the state of Maryland.
If the ruling states that chum is not a pollutant, then Bartlett and the Law Center could file suit against MDE to try to ban chum and chum fishing methods and to enforce the law.
Some in the fishing community are not thrilled about this effort to ban a potential pollutant. “Absolutely absurd,” says Capt. Don Marani, who takes chumming parties from his inner harbor based-boat. “If anything, you are feeding the fish. I don?t see how that would be polluting.”
Since the federal CWA applies to navigable waters, any ruling would not apply to those chumming with corn or doughballs for river and pond carp, using blood-baits for catfish or tossing grasshoppers and beetles to find stream trout before throwing a fly.
While required to enforce the federal CWA, Maryland also has water quality standards that dictate minimum levels of dissolved oxygen (DO) and water clarity, along with other water quality indicators. DO meter readings conducted by Bartlett show that DO markedly drops in areas where chum is used.
Both Bluemel and Bartlett also cite scientific evidence that indicates that chum is an intermediary in the cycle of mycobacteria, which continues to cause mycobacteriosis. Mycobacteriosis causes spleen damage and lesions in fish and can cause “fish handlers disease” in humans.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting, and the outdoors, and is currently working on his 25th book. He can be reached at [email protected].
