NORTH CAROLINA STATE LIBRARY 

 RALEIGH 



N. C. 

 Doc. 







MAR 3 1 1977 



September, 1976 



12S5 Burlington Laboratories 

 NCSU, Raleigh, N.C. 27607 Tel: (919) 737-2U5U 



the dilemma of Eurasian Watermilfoil 



In 1959 people noticed strange, long 

 plants growing in a pond on the Pea Island 

 refuge. The plants disappeared after the 

 Great Ash Wednesday storm of 1962 and 

 people forgot about the incident. Then in 

 1964, Currituck Sound fishermen began 

 noticing similar patches of weed. A year 

 later one patch had spread over 100 acres 

 and by 1968, 8,000 acres of Currituck Sound 

 were completely covered and 67,000 more 

 acres were showing the plant. Today an 

 estimated 60,000 to 80,000 acres in Curri- 

 tuck Sound, Kitty Hawk Bay, Little, Per- 

 quimans, Pasquotank and Alligator Rivers, 

 East Lake, Point Harbor, Martin Point 

 Creek and Back Bay, Va., are tangled with 

 the weed — Eurasian Watermilfoil. 



Since its arrival milfoil has snarled fish- 

 ing lines, gummed boat motors, tipped sail- 

 boats and provoked quarrels between the 

 bass sport fishermen who think the milfoil 

 helps fishing and the residents and com- 

 mercial fishermen who think milfoil is a 

 pain in the neck. 



Local residents complain about the mos- 

 quitoes, flies and spiders that inhabit the 

 milfoil and the rotten egg smell that arises 

 every fall when the plant rots and drifts to 

 shore in large putrid mats. Eel fishermen 

 curse the milfoil when they pull dead eels 

 from their traps. Shoreline property own- 

 ers grumble that their land's resale value 

 has probably dipped. One woman lost her 

 home when the firefighters' pumps clogged 

 with milfoil from the Sound. And one man 

 states flatly that Currituck Sound is "sick." 



"It's a mess. There's no doubt about it," 

 sighed Currituck County Manager Graham 

 Pervier. 



Where did milfoil come from? What is it? 

 Why is it here? And what can we do about 

 it? 



