DATE: Thursday, April 24, 1997              TAG: 9704240411

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RALEIGH                           LENGTH:   48 lines

BASNIGHT: OUTER BANKS SAFE FROM FISH-KILLING ORGANISM

Recent reports about a tiny organism preying on fish in eastern North Carolina rivers have left people around the country with the false impression that the state's coastal waters are dangerous, Senate leader Marc Basnight says.

Basnight, D-Dare, issued a statement Tuesday welcoming scrutiny of the fish-killing organism pfiesteria, but trying to draw a distinction between problem areas and the Outer Banks, a popular tourist destination.

``It has become increasingly clear to me that in stories and discussions about this issue, the Outer Banks and surrounding waters have been lumped into the same category as the rivers at issue,'' said Basnight, president pro tem of the state Senate.

``The unfortunate side of this gross generalization is that the people who plan to visit the islands are convinced that the islands are unsafe,'' he said. ``That means that residents there who make their living from fishing the waters and hosting visitors across the country are the victims of this misinformation.''

Scientists say pfiesteria, a one-celled organism called a dinoflagellate, secretes a toxin that eats holes in fish, then slowly paralyzes their muscles and suffocates them. It can live in either fresh or salt water and seems to proliferate and take on a deadly form when exposed to high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous - byproducts of human and animal waste.

Nowhere has the tiny killer been more prevalent than in North Carolina's huge estuaries, where slow-moving saltwater is captured behind the state's barrier islands. It has left millions of menhaden, shad and flounder dead and rotting on the shores of the Neuse and New rivers.

Some researchers suspect that the organism preys on humans, too.

More than a dozen fishermen, divers and others have complained of open sores on their bodies and other symptoms after coming into contact with water fouled with dead fish.

North Carolina State University researcher JoAnn Burkholder, who helped discover the organism in 1990, is convinced that pfiesteria's toxins sickened her and as many as nine other researchers.

But she has said state health officials seem more concerned with avoiding bad publicity that could harm tourism than investigating the possible danger to humans.

Questions about pfiesteria's effects on people have grown since the recent publication of ``And the Waters Turned to Blood'' by Rodney Barker. State officials have criticized the book and complained that it created hysteria.

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