Way Downstream

In Virginia, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission gives the state until July 1 to comply with an order to cap Omega Protein’s massive harvest of menhaden. The Virginia Legislature is defying the commission’s directive — ignoring concern in Chesapeake Country that the Texas company is imperiling rockfish and crabs by removing so much of their food. But new Gov. Tim Kaine says he will comply, which would head off federal sanctions against his state ...

In Annapolis, fish scientists, who had gathered to ponder the mycobacteriosis attacking Bay rockfish, left after three days last week without concluding where the disease comes from and what should be done about it. But they agreed on one thing: more stripers are becoming afflicted, over half of those sampled by researchers. The affliction is not viewed as dangerous to humans ...

In Prince George’s County, the utility giant Mirant has agreed to begin cleaning up its polluting Chalk Point Generating Plant, which sits across from Calvert County on the Patuxent River. With federal and state regulators on its tail, Mirant agreed to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide pollution by a total of 29 million tons annually at Chalk Point and three other power plants in Maryland and Virginia. You can see NOx gasses, which are harmful to our lungs, in the reddish tint of the night sky ...

Our Creature Feature comes from Washington, where the National Academy of Sciences reports that dolphins do something that your dog, and maybe even your heedless child, doesn’t do: Recognize names.

Scientists already knew that bottlenose dolphins make whistling noises. But what was reported in the study is that they have signature whistles recognized by one another when they communicate. Not only that, two dolphins in a whistling conversation can refer to a third dolphin by name. What’s so special about that? Other than humans, no species recognizes names in such a sophisticated way.