Sunday, April 06, 2008

Rust Monsters

The Frederick News-Post is reporting that concern about the spread of the rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) in Maryland has led to the state's Department of Natural Resources proposing new regulations that will include a ban on using crayfish as bait starting in 2009. In the meantime, the DNR is asking fishermen to avoid releasing any crayfish bait into the wild. The reasoning behind the request is that the native and introduced species are too difficult to tell apart.

2 comments:

GreenmanTim said...

Rust monsters? Did you every play AD&D? Nasty critters, with carapaces that pitted steel and degraded iron.

Jennifer Forman Orth said...

Indeed I did, but for my inspiration here, I was drawing specifically from ADOM. (Warning: do not click on that link if you have a predisposition for addiction to things rendered in ASCII code! :-))