CUMBERLAND - Biologists for the Maryland Inland Fisheries Division admitted Monday that agency workers spread whirling disease to the Bear Creek Trout Rearing Station near Accident by transporting infected fish there from another Garrett County facility.

That facility - ponds at Mettiki Coal Company in far southern Garrett County where small trout were grown to stocking size - has been closed. The Bear Creek unit will be devoid of fish sometime this spring.

Biologist Susan Rivers called the movement of the diseased fish from one facility to the other inadvertent. Rivers' comment came Monday night at a public meeting of the Sport Fish Advisory Commission at Allegany College of Maryland.

"We view this as a very serious situation in Maryland," said Fisheries Director Howard King. "Rest assured that we will remain vigilant."

Whirling disease is an infection caused by a microscopic parasite and is named for the characteristic swimming behavior that results as the parasite multiplies in the head and spinal cartilage of the infected fish, according to the Whirling Disease Foundation. In western states, the disease has decimated some wild trout populations. The disease is not a threat to humans.

Neil Jacobs, a Garrett County resident speaking on behalf of the Mid-Atlantic Council of Trout Unlimited and its 1,500 members, expressed displeasure and frustration with the agency's lack of meaningful public education on the matter. He said recent negotiations with the state agency resulted in an agreement whereby an outside consultant approved by TU and the state would oversee future responses to the disease.

"There is a failed history here," Jacobs said. "Somewhere there has been a flaw in the process," he added, as reasoning for bringing an outside expert into the picture.

TU representatives have told the DNR that whirling disease is a potential disaster for wild trout in Western Maryland. The group claims that the state has been "routinely culturing and stocking trout infected with whirling disease in Western Maryland waters since 1995," according to a position paper. TU further claims that DNR had known of whirling disease symptoms in hatchery fish for more than a year before diagnosing the disease.

Some of the raceways at Bear Creek were infected and some were not, according to Bob Lunsford, chief of inland fisheries.

"Once the healthy fish have all been stocked, sometime in April, we will drain the raceways and ponds and cover them with lime to disinfect them," Lunsford said, adding that the facility should likely be repopulated with new trout sometime in May.

More than 80,000 diseased trout were taken from Bear Creek by a rendering company in Winchester, Va., whose processing kills the disease, according to state officials.

"We have now purchased more than 80,000 trout from private hatcheries for stocking this spring," Lunsford said. "It costs us twice as much to buy the trout as to raise them ourselves."

Whirling disease was discovered in the North Branch of the Potomac River below Jennings Randolph Dam in 1996 in the fish that are reared there in floating net pens. In addition, more recent testing of free ranging rainbow trout in that river showed that three of 10 trout had the disease.

Lunsford said the agency will negotiate with the dam owner, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in an effort to change or possibly even eliminate that net pen operation.

The net pens reared 20,000 trout and another 44,000 trout were grown at Mettiki, according to Mike Dean, hatchery supervisor.

Agency officials agreed that for now there are many more questions than answers concerning the future of both hatchery and wild trout in Western Maryland. Fishery crews will launch a sampling program to test wild trout, such as native brook trout, for the disease. A Colorado fishery biologist in 1996 reported in the Journal of the American Fisheries Society that brook trout experienced 85 percent or higher mortality within four months of exposure.

The North Branch of the Potomac has tributaries in West Virginia. Bear Creek, from which disease testing results of free ranging fish are being awaited, is in the drainage that flows into Pennsylvania and eventually the Ohio River drainage. Lunsford said results of Maryland tests would be shared with both of those states.

Michael A. Sawyers can be reached at msawyers@times-news.com. See his column on the Outdoors page Sunday for additional comment about whirling disease in Maryland.