News
A Sad Thanksgiving Reflection on the Bay’s Decline
We are all taking time from busy schedules and our frantic American lifestyle to give thanks for our many blessings here in Bay country. The Buffleheads and Hooded Mergansers are here on Oyster Creek where we live very close to the Bay and Double-crested Cormorants are diving and feasting on small fish. As I reflect on our bounty I come to the realization and then sadness of how we are surrounded by a much diminished population of waterfowl and wildlife due to human disturbance.
Read MoreSome Inconvenient Truths About Restoring the Bay
(Posted by Gerald Winegrad)
Please join me, Friday, Nov. 19, 3:00 p.m. in Room 1140 of the Plant Sciences Building at the University of Maryland, College Park for a presentation on the status of Chesapeake Bay restoration and what needs to be done. The states have repeatedly failed to meet agreed upon pollution reductions and the EPA has set a pollution diet (TMDL) that requires states to reduce pollutants or face federal sanctions for the first time. Efforts to achieve Bay restoration are still lagging as 90 percent of the Bay’s waters fail to meet Clean Water Act requirements and therefore, the states are in violation of the Clean Water Act.
Read MoreThe Fog of the Bay
(Posted by Fred Tutman) As this is my first post on a new blog, I feel I should explain who I am and why I think my perspective brings something different to the table. A child of my waterway (the Patuxent). I grew up with a deep love and a soulful connection to nature of…
Read MoreScience and the Chesapeake Bay Action Plan
(Posted by Howard Ernst)
For decades, discussions about Chesapeake Bay policy have been dominated by the hundreds of environmental organizations that claim to represent the Bay and the hundreds of industry leaders that the environmentalists often oppose. The industry leaders are typically depicted by their environmental opponents as profiting from using the Bay as a cheap and convenient place to dispose of unwanted byproducts (poultry waste, toxic waste from steel production, runoff from developers…). The environmentalists, on the other hand, are viewed by their industrial opponents as championing pie in the sky ideas that are too expensive and too impractical to be taken seriously.
Read MoreWho Will Tell the People
(Posted by Howard Ernst)
When the Bay dies there will be no headlines, no major news flash, no one to sound the alarm. “The Bay” is as much an idea, as it is a place of water and mud. But to keep the idea alive requires capturing the attention of the general public, and for years the key to that was capturing headlines. But as anyone who reads a daily paper knows, and there are fewer and fewer of us, the number of headlines are shrinking, the amount of print given for each headline shrinking even more, and the number of professional journalists covering the Bay can now be counted on one hand.
Read MoreSaving the Bay
(Posted by Gerald Winegrad)
My name is Gerald Winegrad and I’m worried about the future of the Chesapeake Bay. I grew up in Annapolis and spent many a summer day with my friend Michael Bailey fishing all around Annapolis. Michael Bailey is now dead and the Bay is dying.
Earlier this month, my wife and I were planning our big annual end of summer crab feast on our deck on Oyster Creek south of Annapolis. We have two crab pots and had a dozen crabs to share but for 22 family members, I had to find a bushel of nice ones. So I called local waterman (a dying breed) who I knew from years back and tried to order a bushel of crabs. He had sold me a busting bushel of fat Jimmies in May but told me an incredibly sad story: Now, when crabs should be plentiful, he could not catch even a bushel because dead water had killed every crab in his pots in the West River. He was saddened not just because his livelihood was hurt, but at the terrible waste caused by oxygen deprived water killing every crab.
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