This cooperative Committee includes membership from the NOAA 
Estuarine Programs Office, Northeast Fisheries Center of the 
National Marine Fisheries Service, the Maryland DNR, Virginia 
Marine Resources Commission, Virginia Institute of Marine 
Sciences, and representatives from academia in Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, and Virginia. 
The EPA Bay study made a policy decision when it started its 
five-year study, that was not to examine fisheries, but to look 
at problems of water quality, submerged aquatic vegetation, and 
toxics in the water. This was okay, except that toward the end 
of the study it seemed that every time the telephone rang it was 
somebody from the EPA study wanting some fishery data so that 
they could relate fisheries to trends in water quality. These 
types of data were simply not available at that time in the 
right format to provide to people in other disciplines. 
The data that we did have has been collected sporadically 
over the years, and even for those studies that have 25 or 30 
years worth of data, nobody had ever attempted to look at these 
data in entirety. The major effort of the Chesapeake Bay Stock 
Assessment Committee this year will be to get these data sets 
into a format that water quality scientists and other fishery 
scientists can look at and use when trying to determine the 
trends and also to see how they relate to each other. 
In addition, after the initial efforts where the long-term 
data bases are examined, the Committee plans to move into 
assuming continued funding of an area looking at biological 
effects where the problems that are addressed in the EPA report 
and the problems that are being observed today in the fisheries 
and stocks are actually examined for cause and effect. 
Significant progress has been made but knowledge is kind of 
like fish, it doesn't keep very well. We need to continue our 
efforts. Thank you. 
Dr. D'Elia: We have time for one quick question. 
[No response]. 
Dr. D'Elia: Thank you very much. 
Next we're going to have a joint presentation. I've been 
promised by each of the speakers that they will each hold to 10 
minutes. They are going to talk about toxic pollution. Dr. 
Robert J. Huggett from VIMS and Dr. James G. Sanders from the 
Academy of Natural Sciences. Dr. Huggett will lead off. 
44 
