🚀 go-pugleaf

warning, this post contains sarcasm and surrealism.

"Brian Raines (TheChesapeakeBay.com)" wrote:
> 
> Impacts of Pfiesteria
> Outbreaks could substantially reduce tourism revenues
> 
> When toxic Pfiesteria piscicida microorganisms invade recreational
> waterways, summer tourism and seafood sales can suffer, a researcher
> with the University of Delaware Sea Grant College Program reported in a
> briefing at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
> 
> A new survey of 3,500 coastal residents from New York to the Carolinas
> -- conducted by UD Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service Director James M.
> Falk -- reports that Pfiesteria outbreaks may dramatically affect
> consumers' seafood eating habits and travel choices.
> 
> "According to our survey," Falk points out, "a Pfiesteria outbreak could
> reduce tourism in an affected area by at least 40 percent, significantly
> impacting coastal communities."

Actually, considering how it affects the central nervous system, and noting
that it can in fact incorporate chloroplasts and apparently may to some
degree wander overland or perculate into the water table, especially in dry
years...

 <evil grin>

Would _you_ come as a tourist to a state where everyone who'd drunk
wellwater or had been in contact with the Chesapeake Bay had been reduced to
a bunch of festering mindless zombies wandering around unable to remember
their own names?

Oh, and occasionally moaning "no ICC! No ICC!"

Actually, if they could assure tourists that they could be protected from
the effects, lots of people might in fact decide they'd love to see that
sort of thing and take advantage of the way cheap tourism possible when
hoteliers forget that they're supposed to charge money for sales... plus you
never know what brain-deadened celebrity you might see wandering around
muttering something about "smart growth, not no growth" as the Cell From
Hell eats their skin...

</surrealistic sarcasm>

> 
> Find out more at the URL:
> http://TheChesapeakeBay.com/pfiesteria_impacts.shtml
> 
> Brian Raines

-- 
                    "We look through a glass but darkly:
                 What we see is more colored by our beliefs, 
               than what we believe is colored by what we see."