European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 13, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Chinese confront pollution of heavily peopled Waters Highway and sewer for a third of the mighty Yangtze is one of the worlds dirtiest by Robert Poole National geographic deep in chivas Sichuan the Yangtze River runs crowded in by hulking Blue mountains and terraced Orange Orchards that climb then vanish in a chilling ducks and samoans Bob on the Rushing caught Here and there by shafts of sunlight that Stab through the swirling from the Bridge of an East is red River a passenger takes in the reminiscent of an ancient chinese landscape then the ship rounds a and the town of Chan Shou comes into it is a Jumble of ramshackle Brick factories and perched High on a Stone in the midst of the a Pagoda leans at an a cultural derelict almost obscured by the Haze of yellow smoke that envelops the another factory dumps effluent from a pipe in the the waste liquid steams As it meets the Cool tumbles Down the and spreads into the forming great blobs of yellow foam on the As far As the Eye can the foam clings to the Chan Shou Bank of the the Miles is one of the worlds mightiest flowing thorough the most populous Region of the most populous nation on but the River is also one of the worlds dirtiest its Waters serve As Highway and sewer for on third of people use the As they do the grand canal and yellow for hauling dumping brushing rinsing catching though not As heavily silted As the the Yangtze runs thick with a result of deforestation it carries More than twice the annual soil Runoff of the Mississippi about the volume of material it took to build the great this same great current is a source of drinking water for millions for a number of a final resting we see a lot of bodies on the nine or ten on the usual trip from Chongqing to says Xiong a Steamer Captain who has worked on the Yangtze for More than 30 most of them drown when their boats turn or when kids try to swim in big most drownings occur in summer when heavy Rains swell the raising its level by As much As 100 feet in some in when the Rains subside and the water is fewer people China can do Little to prevent such but after years of the country is mounting a major Effort to cleanse the the cleanup focuses on the 964 mile stretch Between Chongqing and that part is the most seriously says Fang grand canal receives untreated sewage of tens of Many people have no other source who Heads the ant pollution program of the Yangtze River Valley planning office in an says that most pollution comes from Indus trial waste some 90 percent of All the Industrial discharge flowing into the River is to Correct that China now requires new factories to include a pollution control strategy in their construction we help them meet National Stan Dards of and says we also try to control their site if the plans do not include pollution mitigation we can Stop to Monitor pollution from existing fangs Lye it takes monthly water samples from 215 permanent stations scattered throughout the vast Yangtze drainage China also uses specially equipped ships for to bile Fang takes a visitor aboard one such the research ship moored at Ever Green plies the lower reaches of the measuring contaminants such As human heavy and we have 20 scientists and 30 says Fang As he Tours Cabins outfitted with fish and when fangs scientists identify a polluting his Agency imposes a Fine and a deadline to pay for new pollution control the rest of the Fang goes to the municipality in which the Industry is the municipality uses that Money for treatment of which flows raw into the River from most and what happens if an Industry does not cooperate if any Industry pollutes the water we can Stop their says asked How Many industries had been forced to cease he says his Agency closed a factory near the City of Guilmin in such action is most industries try to clean Fang although chivas pollution control measures have been in practical effect Only since the first of this dec Fang already credits the program with improved water Quality around the City of Wuhan and at nearby Lake which is linked to the Yangtze by the grand the an ancient engineering feat that links Hangzhou to is now severely polluted with Industrial Runoff and human one sees red lettered signs warning people not to Wash eating ten or night soil buckets in the then one sees people doing All of those the government is draining and cleaning the most severely polluted Section of the canal in tourist oriented cities such As Suzhou and and plans Call for a cleanup of the entire for the we Are very says we have Learned that the people who suffer most from pollution Are those who work closest to its Staple of Caribbean islands Over Shino threatens conch by Barbara Moffet National geographic nearly every Friday on the Eastern Caribbean Island of hundreds of residents and tourists gather to dance in the and eat conch meat barbecued on those Friday night fetes Are really wiping out the is lands Queen observes Marine biologist Carl to the North on in the Sargasso it already May be too late to save the Queen Berg a Survey he made of bermudas Waters turned up Only a few Young the conch a Large Marine Snail with a flamboyant Pearly Pink Shell is growing scarce throughout its the shells that children lift to their ears to hear the Ocean and tourists carry Home to adorn Coffee tables and mantles Are sold at the estimated rate of a million a year in Caribbean people have endless purposes for the conch arranging the shells in neat rows to Mark for entire Isles have been formed from castoffs but conch pronounced is most important As a source of the hamburger of the the conch Snail is Cut from its Shell and its muscle meat prepared in dozens of ways in frit and raw with millions of conch Are ship Ped to the United states and Supply and other Caribbean especially to support a Export has severely depleted the of the Marine biological Laboratory at Woods and his Katherine Are trying to reverse the they sailed the Eastern Caribbean in gathering hundreds of conch specimens for on each of the 15 islands they they heard virtually the same As Berg recalls the old folks would when i was a kid i could Wade out knee deep and catch dinner for our now we have to take scuba tanks far from Shore and dive As deep As 100 feet for a diver for 20 Berg often had a hard time finding especially at where fish Ermen from nearby Guadeloupe and Martinique have helped decimate Sand and Coral growth often obscured the shells from the islanders fisheries officials unanimously supported bergs goal to determine scientifically How to ensure a permanent conch population for All of the ignorance ran some of the fishermen were collecting the babies and not realizing they were Katherine Orr they knew nothing about the snails reproduction they thought conch just much of her time was spent teaching islanders the facts of conch the Queen conch Trombus gigas begins life under water As one of thousands of eggs in a Sac that resembles a san covered wad of the egg develops into a not much larger than a Grain of and begins to float transported perhaps hundreds of Miles by the seas As it floats the tiny Shell on its Back after about three the conch loses its swimming lobes and settles onto the Sandy where it will remain for at the age of it has a full Rose coloured Shell and also is ready to conch remain in their shells for mating the female is fertilized by a far reaching male by digging its claw like foot into the a conch can propel itself Forward in a series of Short hops to seek food or flee conch Are believed to live six years on the some of them perhaps twice a goal of the scientists project is to discover which conch populations Are related and How they to determine feasibility of chemical Berg and Orr collected conch samples from four widely scattered Points and the turks and Raicos chemical analysis of the samples showed significant genetic variety among the found last year zeroed in on Mexico and the lesser Antilles islands in the Eastern where conch is an important collecting samples from 19 pop the samples Are being Analysed by University of Colorado professor Jeffrey Mitton to determine the interdependence of conch lets say All of Lucias conch float there from Berg Lucia could kill off All of its conch and still have plenty coming the key to its Supply would lie Miles away on even patterns within Lucias Waters Are Berg has advised islanders planning to Start a conch fishery on the South end to wait for results of the spec Imen if the islands Southern conch prove to be the parents of those in the a new fishery could destroy All of the islands the decline in conch populations was first noticed More than 10 years ago in Barbados and later at two Sites with Large fisheries Belize and the turks and some islands now restrict conch fishing it has been illegal in Bermuda since to rejuvenate bermudas conch Berg has recommended moving egg cases in from a downstream he also has helped the organization of Eastern Carrilean states to draw up Laws regulating conch the regulations which would bar collection of baby conch await ratification by the islands to graphic april successful snorkelers emerging from Waters of a Crox reef with a Queen the stars and stripes Page 15