Chesapeake Bay

Conflicting – but correct – reports on Bay dead zones from Md. and Va. were a matter of timing

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It was quite a surprise: Two reports on Chesapeake Bay dissolved oxygen levels in 2017 came to starkly different conclusions. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported improvements and a vastly reduced dead zone. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science found oxygen conditions at their worst since 2014. Scientists at both organizations were caught off guard last fall when the seemingly contradictory findings were released within a few weeks of each other and sent them scrambling to analyze the cause. 

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Wild oyster ‘bed check’ offers glimpse of harvests to come

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Every year since 1939, Maryland has surveyed its portion of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries to see how the oysters were doing. Though no longer the mainstay they once were, oysters are still a pillar of the region’s fishing industry and a vital cog in the Bay ecosystem.

Chesapeake Bay

Oysters making themselves at home on reefs of concrete, granite

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Typically, shells of other oysters are the natural landing pads for recently hatched bivalve larvae, which need to attach to something hard as they begin sedentary lives of filtering algae from the water. But the Chesapeake is running short on shells; there aren’t enough to go around to sustain the traditional wild fishery. Scientists have turned to old highway concrete and granite, and found they work just as well.

Chesapeake Bay

Smith Island losing land, people and now its shepherd

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Pastor Rick Edmund made Smith Island his home for 17 years. It was the longest he had lived anywhere, and islanders believe he is the longest serving preacher in the centuries-long history of this three-village archipelago across Tangier Sound from Crisfield, Md. June was his last month here — his last island communion, his last crab cake supper. His last commute by car, skiff and golf cart to the three churches he served on Ewell, Rhodes Point and Tylerton.

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Aquaculture reviving Md. oyster industry – as well as watermen

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Decades ago, Wingate Harbor was full of working oystermen in the late fall and winter, plying the Honga River’s thick oyster bars and bringing their catch to the dock. But when diseases took hold and the harvest plummeted, the oystermen hung up their dredges and tongs and left this lower Dorchester County village for other lines of work.
Today, three watermen are back, pulling up oyster cages from leased bottom about one-half mile from the dock at the Honga Oyster Co.

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Sea Grant sustains many marine jobs, but faces uncertain future

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Once a month, Matt Parker and Suzanne Bricker drive along Penny Lane through a Southern Maryland forest until it dead-ends at the Chesapeake Bay. Then, they pull on their waders and hop into a skiff to maneuver out to aquaculture cages, where they grab samples of water and the oysters taking it in. Their results may eventually let oyster growers earn money not only for the bivalves they grow, but also for the water the shellfish clean under the state’s nascent nutrient trading program. But partnerships like Parker’s and Bricker’s won’t be happening in the Chesapeake, or anywhere else, if the Trump administration’s proposed budget is approved later this year. The work is funded by Maryland Sea Grant — one of 33 Sea Grant programs around the nation that help translate science into sustainable coastal economies.

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Prehistoric Native Americans harvested Bay oysters sustainably, study finds

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Native Americans around the Chesapeake Bay may have lived hand to mouth in prehistoric times, but they apparently never got so desperate or greedy that they depleted a readily available food source: the estuary’s once-abundant oysters. That’s the upshot of a new study looking at Bay oyster sizes and harvesting activity through the ages

Chesapeake Bay

Big chicken companies would pay to remove manure, not farmers

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Maryland legislators and contract farmers hired by companies to grow chickens are proposing the Poultry Litter Management Act that would require major animal agriculture companies to pay the cost of properly disposing excess manure on their contract farms. It’s a fairness issue, it has an adverse impact on our environment and we need to clean it up,” said Sen. Joan Carter Conway, D-Baltimore, “and those individuals who are making the mess need to clean up the mess.”