BALTIMORE — Could the Maryland’s first farmed salmon be a threat to the last of its sturgeon?
Lovers of the sturgeon, a species as old as dinosaurs that was once thought to have disappeared from the Chesapeake Bay, worry its fate could hinge on what happens with a massive salmon farm planned on the banks of a pristine Eastern Shore creek.
Environmentalists and scientists are raising fears that a facility Norwegian company AquaCon plans to build in Federalsburg could inundate the shallow Marshyhope Creek with surges of cold water that could make it inhospitable for a population of Atlantic sturgeon that research has shown returns year after year to spawn in its shallow waters with a gravelly bottom. The creek, along with the Nanticoke River it feeds, is believed to be Maryland’s only sturgeon breeding ground.
