Chesapeake Bay earns ‘C’ for overall health; blue crabs, rockfish, anchovies are thriving

Blue crab exhibit at Maryland Science Center shows strains of Chesapeake life

If you’re heading out to the Maryland-Delaware-Virginia beaches soon, chances are you are also considering eating crabs. Before you go, you might want to visit the “Follow the Blue Crab” exhibit at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore. It won’t necessarily diminish your appetite for the crab, whose numbers have plummeted over the years, but it may give you a new appreciation for the stresses and strains of crab life. There’s a giant mechanical crab, which for years has been a big draw for kids, with moving legs and claws (some little ones might find it a bit scary); for adults there’s a huge satellite image of the Chesapeake Bay to walk across, providing an up-close view of the green space, water, land and populated areas that make up the Chesapeake. It’s not difficult to appreciate the complications of trying to keep the bay, and its crabs and other sea life, healthy.

Chesapeake Bay oyster appears to be in recovery mode

A modern-day Lazarus story is taking shape in the Chesapeake Bay, a resurrection from the all but dead. The bay oyster is making a modest comeback, judging from last year’s harvest. The oyster’s habitat is dangerously polluted, its reefs overfished, its numbers decimated by a pair of ravaging diseases — and yet it lives. Virginia and Maryland officials recently gave welcome news for everyone concerned with the fate of the iconic bivalve, a once abundant and precious resource that helped shape the identities of the states and provided a way of life for watermen. Virginia harvested only 79,600 bushels of oysters in 2005 but racked up about 236,200 last year, the most since 1989. Maryland had only 26,400 bushels in 2005 but hauled in 121,200 last year. More than half of Virginia’s increase came from private aquaculture. Officials in both states said the fall stock surveys that assess the population also were promising last year. Virginia’s oyster population has been in a slow upswing recently because of better management of the fishery, said James A. Wesson, director of conservation and replenishment for the state’s fishery division. But the overall population baywide still represents less than 1 percent of its historic numbers. “It’s good news,” said Mike Naylor, director of the shellfish program for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “But don’t get excited.” When Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) announced the recovery in a statement last month, his words suggested excitement. Virginia’s oysters are “delicious” and “profitable,” he said, “hitting tables across the nation and the world on the half-shell, fried, steamed, roasted in a stew.” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) noted in his remarks about the same time that the state’s oyster survey showed the highest survival rate since 1985 — 92 percent — a sign that “our continued commitment to renewing this iconic species has begun to pay off,” even though the patient’s health still doesn’t look all that good. The states have taken different paths in their efforts to save oysters from pollution, harvesting and disease. Virginia protects oysters with large sanctuaries in public waters such as the Rappahannock River but allows watermen to harvest them on a rotating basis about every two years. The state also strongly encourages private aquaculture, selling plots of riverbed or bay floor to oyster farmers for $1.50 an acre. A total of 93,000 acres of water bottom is leased for farming. Virginia’s aquaculture tradition goes back decades, but large -scale farming is about 10 years old. Maryland has poured $50 million into its oyster recovery effort over the past 16 years, with little to show for the investment. Now the state forbids oyster harvesting on a quarter of its reefs, protecting them with a fine of up to $25,000 and 15 years in prison. Maryland is only beginning to develop aquaculture. Since state lawmakers passed a law to allow oyster farming in 2009, 30 applications for the practice have been approved, Naylor said. Both states engage in oyster breeding, submerging adult males and females in warm water to encourage them to mate. This goes on at Maryland’s Horn Point Lab, where eggs are nursed from fertilization to babies, which are called spat. When the spat are big enough, they are attached to custom-washed shells recovered from waterways across the nation and restaurants where oysters are slurped. Millions of spat clinging to shells have gone from labs to oyster reefs. Some environmentalists and scientists say none of that is enough. In August, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science recommended a drastic step: End the harvest. The recommendation was based on a study that determined what natural resources officials in the states already knew: The oysters were all but gone, reduced by nearly 100 percent from the hundreds of millions of bushels that existed when European explorers first navigated local waterways in the early 1500s. Michael J. Wilberg, the study’s chief researcher, said that even a moratorium might not save the oyster. State naturalists say the problem is more complicated. Even if left alone, oysters would die by the bushel on their reefs. The diseases Dermo and MSX — origin unknown, but possibly from Asia, officials said — kill many about the time they become adults, just before they’re ready to mate. “The fishery has been a headache for us for 30 years,” said John Bull, a spokesman for Virginia marine resources. “It has almost bordered on a nightmare. The diseases almost wiped out the oyster.” It is thought that Dermo and MSX became particularly deadly in the 1990s, when the oyster population fell off a cliff. It went from 55,400 bushels in Virginia in 1995 to 17,600 a year later. Maryland’s steep drop started six years after Virginia’s, when the harvest fell from 348,000 bushels in 2001 to 26,400 in 2005. The diseases are present in both states, but Virginia has more of a problem because the level of salinity in the bay is higher there. They thrive in saline. Wesson said studies have shown that Virginia oysters appear to be developing a resistance to the diseases. Naylor said there’s no evidence to show that Maryland oysters are doing the same, but officials theorize that high water volume in the past two years has diluted salinity. Drought increases the salinity level, which increases disease. Virginia officials say their oysters have fared a little better than Maryland’s, but for that they have farmers to thank. Of the 236,000 oyster bushels counted in the latest survey, nearly 137,000 came from private aquaculture. And farmed oysters look better — clean and plump, perfect for slurping. Farmers grow a triploid oyster, sterilizing them by adding a third chromosome. It robs their desire to procreate in summer, a process that leaves the oysters looking cloudy and nasty. The fatter, juicier oyster resembled what McDonnell lauded. “It’s good news, but don’t get excited,” Mark Bryer, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program for the Nature Conservancy, said about the recent recovery. “I wouldn’t overstate it . . . because it’s only been a couple years. We want to see it happen for five, 10, 20 and 50 years. ” Read more from The Washington Post Oyster study backs fishing moratorium ‘Dead zone’ grows in the Chesapeake Maryland’s big plan to boost bay oysters

How eliminating two EPA programs could affect large parts of America

Although the requested cuts are not likely to pass, the proposal would return the responsibility of both these efforts back to state-level and local entities. However, without a federal agency tasked with holding states accountable, many goals may not be met. In the Chesapeake Bay, states have proved in the past they were not able to reach cleanup goals by themselves without federal intervention. More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into America’s largest estuary with a watershed extending from Virginia into southern New York and throughout six Mid-Atlantic states. More than 17 million people live in the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed. All precipitation and runoff from this watershed drains into the Chesapeake Bay and onward to the Atlantic Ocean. The Chesapeake is an economic powerhouse, serving as a major link in the intercoastal waterway as well as supporting a robust fishing industry famous for its blue crabs and oysters. It’s also a major draw for tourism, attracting boaters, outdoor enthusiasts and sport fishermen. The bay has recently found itself struggling to coexist with the population centers and agricultural hubs that are within its watershed. Through efforts by the EPA and other organizations, the bay has started to rebound and is the healthiest it’s been in years, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. In 2014, the six governors of the watershed states and the mayor of the District of Columbia signed an agreement along with the administrator of the EPA to set goals and track the progress of the bay’s restoration. This agreement holds several states accountable and allows collaboration across state lines. One part of the agreement is maintaining healthy blue crab populations and restoring oyster populations and habitat. The agreement maintains a population target of 215 million female blue crabs in the bay and has facilitated an annual gathering of the various federal and local jurisdictions. If the population fell near or below the established threshold of 70 million, it would prompt management action from the jurisdictions. “If we’re just talking about blue crabs among the [local jurisdictions], we’re sort of only talking about what they can do, and what they can do is control harvest,” said Bruce Vogt, a manager of National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association’s Chesapeake Bay Office and coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay program’s sustainable fisheries goal implementation team. “What the partnership in the bay program provides that’s valuable is, we’re able to say we think these other factors – habitat, water quality – are also important.” But the bay’s health is still not perfect. In 2010, the EPA established total maximum daily loads of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in the bay, providing a goal for each of the jurisdictions to work toward to decrease the levels of these pollutants. Without the EPA to hold local governments accountable, water pollutants could go unchecked. The EPA limits set a goal of implementing strategies by 2025 to decrease nitrogen and phosphorus levels, with acknowledgement that the actual reduction process may take longer. According to data from the United States Geological Survey, although most jurisdiction areas have improved their pollutant levels since 2005 and some have met the goals, the majority of them have not yet reached them. In addition to nutrient pollution, sediment that is washed into rivers that feed the bay also cause problems. The fine, silty dust covers underwater grasses, harming an important part of the ecosystem. Part of the cleanup plan across the watershed states is to reduce runoff from farms and municipalities by upgrading dated sewer infrastructure. The Conowingo Dam, on the Susquehanna River in Maryland, is ground zero for the sediment problem in the bay. Over the years, sediment has accumulated behind the dam, filling it to the point where it can hold no more. When major storms bring heavy rain, tons of sediment is washed into the bay. After particularly heavy rains associated with Tropical Storm Lee, in 2011, the sediment plume was visible from space. It’s not uncommon for some parts of the bay to be shut down after storms because of the increased levels of pollution. When this happens, fishing, boating, tourism and recreation all suffer. Trump’s budget proposal also cuts the EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which was launched in 2010 to protect and restore the lakes. The Great Lakes region stretches across eights states and affects more than 30 million people in the United States and Canada. The lakes hold 84 percent of all surface freshwater in North America. Efforts to restore the lakes also represent a diplomatic collaboration via the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the two nations. With the EPA spearheading U.S. activities, the agreement was first introduced in 1972 and was updated most recently in 2012. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1987 identified 43 geographic areas of concern: 26 in the U.S., 12 in Canada and five shared between the two countries. These were locations suffering environmental degradation as a result of human activity. In 2012, the updated agreement reaffirmed these areas and the effort to restore them. Since being identified, four areas in the U.S. and three areas in Canada have been removed from the list, because they have been restored. Two of the recovered U.S. sites received nearly $13 million total funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Restoration of White Lake, Mich., an area of concern delisted in 2014, spurred new real estate development, said Richard Hobrla, head of the Great Lakes Coordination Program within the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. “If [the budget] went through as it’s proposed, it would be fairly catastrophic,” Hobrla said. Although he expects some funding cuts, Hobrla doesn’t think the GLRI will be completely shut down. “There’s just too much support for the EPA and for the program and for the general goals of clean water and clean air.” Nevertheless, some areas could be heavily affected if funding stopped. Torch Lake, Mich., on the shore of Lake Superior, is one example of a trouble spot that needs more work, according to Hobrla, who speculates that a loss of funding from GLRI would mean it might never get cleaned up. For similar areas of concern that have not significantly improved, Hobrla thinks it’s unlikely there would be state funding to support these initiatives if federal funding were to be drained. A 2011 study by the University of Michigan found that more than 1.5 million jobs are directly connected to the lakes, generating $62 billion in wages annually. The Rust Belt states that border the Great Lakes rely on them for shipping and transporting manufacturing goods. But the lakes’ impact on the region extends beyond the factories. According to the Brookings Institution, every dollar spent on the GLRI will bring in $2 of long-term economic gains. Among other things, the EPA fights the spread of invasive species within the lakes. These non-native animals out-compete native species and disrupt the ecological balance of the lakes. Many, like the Asian carp, have voracious appetites and no natural predators in the ecosystem. The EPA has been fighting a number of invasive species over the years. Some have already infiltrated the lakes. It’s estimated that aquatic invasive species cost the region $100 million a year. Asian carp were introduced into Arkansas lakes in the 1970s and have been spotted as close as six miles from the lakes in the Chicago River. When startled, the fish—which can grow to be up to 50 pounds—have been known to leap out of the water, high into the air. This behavior can be dangerous, risking the safety of recreational boaters and property. Another invasive species, the zebra mussel, attach themselves to surfaces and can cause problems when they block intake pipelines. They also attach themselves to docks, buoys and the lake bed. Their sharp shells have led to beach closings to protect swimmers, which hurts local tourism. The EPA is also responsible for monitoring the water quality of the lakes. When bacteria is high, local areas might close swimming at beaches. A major problem for the lakes is phosphorous pollution and associated algae blooms, which can deplete oxygen. Low oxygen levels can kill fish, putting vital fisheries at risk. In addition to funding, the EPA provides research that helps local jurisdictions make decisions as well as coordination to hold them accountable. While Trump’s proposed cuts may not pass, a significant reduction in the EPA’s budget may have wide-ranging effects. Sources: Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, USGS Chesapeake Bay River Input Monitoring stations data, USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database, USDA, Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Brookings Institution, Office of Management and Budget.

The leaders we elect this fall will seal the Chesapeake Bay’s fate for decades to come

_J. Charles Fox and Jeff Corbin served as senior advisers at the Environmental Protection Agency, where they advised the EPA administrator on Chesapeake Bay issues. Previously, they held senior positions in the Maryland and Virginia governments and worked for nonprofit organizations on the Chesapeake for more than 40 years combined._ In the spring, scientists announced that the Chesapeake Bay was improving, with most health indicators trending in the right direction. Pollution was decreasing, fish and wildlife populations were increasing and underwater grasses were thriving in places. And it may come as a surprise that the secret to the bay’s recent improvement was not a technical or scientific “silver bullet” but leadership from a former Virginia governor. It’s not yet time to celebrate, of course. Chesapeake Bay challenges remain monumental, particularly because of agriculture pollution in Pennsylvania and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and contaminated stormwater runoff throughout our highly developed, 64,000-square-mile watershed. But it’s time to reflect on our progress and what got us here. The bay’s improving health is not a supernatural miracle; it is a product of decades of difficult political decisions by the region’s elected officials. And make no mistake, the Chesapeake is being viewed as a litmus test for other great waters around the nation that are in dire need of restoration. Having served in many different roles on Chesapeake restoration efforts, we’ve both seen policies that work, as well as ones that never lived up to their promises. The most important lesson we’ve learned? Leadership matters. Particularly from the federal government. Indeed, the policies that flow from this fall’s elections will seal the fate of the Chesapeake for years to come. With past commitments left unfulfilled, and a widely supported 2025 restoration deadline looming, will its health continue to improve as we meet our cleanup goals on schedule? Or will the bay be bogged down by bureaucracy or mired in conflict? The modern Chesapeake cleanup effort was born in 1983, a product of a federal- state collaboration, with leadership from a U.S. senator, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the governor of Maryland. With the support of the region’s governors, state legislators and the D.C. mayor, the effort evolved over the years into a true partnership. Yet the federal government is a partner without equals. It represents the broader interests of the region, not those of a particular jurisdiction. It has a core responsibility of implementing federal environmental laws, upon which many state and local laws are built. It is the glue that binds the bay cleanup program together. There have been a handful of truly major changes in policy over the past 35 years. The 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement, for example, took the unprecedented step of establishing and adopting numeric goals and deadlines to reduce pollution and restore the bay ecosystem. Another significant policy change occurred about seven years ago. Few elected officials understood how to leverage the power of the federal government in the same manner as Tim Kaine, then Virginia’s governor and now the Democratic nominee for vice president. Just months after taking office, President Obama issued a first-ever executive order for the Chesapeake, outlining his expectations for accelerating action. Kaine was instrumental in making that happen, demonstrating that there is real value in a federal-state partnership. The inclusion of accountability, including short-term objectives, was the result of Kaine’s leadership during his term as chairman of the Chesapeake Executive Council — the top body that oversees the Chesapeake restoration efforts. Did this new pollution control regime save the bay? Of course not. Full restoration of the Chesapeake is a long-term struggle that must be embraced by our future leaders. Federal intervention in delivering clean water and healthy ecosystems is sometimes misunderstood or, in some cases, viewed with hostility by state and local governments. Intergovernmental relationships are delicate and need to be managed respectfully. However, the citizens of Flint, Mich., because of the water crisis there, understand why we need federal leadership. Those of us who know and care about the Chesapeake do as well. Given the significant economic and social value of a healthy Chesapeake Bay, it is paramount that issues defining the Chesapeake’s future receive attention from candidates running for federal office. Lessons from leaders such as Kaine have demonstrated how governments can work together to make progress. This year’s elections, and the new leaders who will emerge, will be profoundly important to the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the communities in this region. **Read more:** The Post’s View: A failing bay cleanup Angus Phillips: The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab need our help now — or never Will Baker: A manure solution for the Chesapeake Bay

Leaders of Chesapeake Bay states and the DIstrict sign new pact to improve bay’s health

Government leaders in the Chesapeake Bay watershed on Monday signed a broad agreement to restore the health of its waters, as the blue crab and oyster populations continue to fluctuate and scientists complain about toxins that are changing the sex of fish. The Chesapeake Watershed Agreement is the third signed since the 1980s by the six watershed states — Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York — and the District. Unlike in the previous agreements, the governors and mayor who signed it vowed to go beyond limiting the amount of pollution that rolls into bay tributaries from cities and farms. They pledged to investigate the effects of chemical contamination and toxins, look at how land use impedes the bay’s improvement and study the threat of sea-level rise. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who spearheaded the effort, called it “the most inclusive, collaborative, goal-oriented agreement the Chesapeake Bay watershed has ever seen.” Not only does the pact address water quality, he said, “it also confronts critical emerging issues,” such as climate change, that previous agreements failed to consider. The plan seeks to restore the bay by 2025. It requires cities to improve aging sewers to stop massive overflows and says livestock farms must limit manure flow during rain. The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, where salt water and fresh water mix to create a diverse abundance of marine life. The watershed covers 64,000 square miles and is crucial to Maryland and Virginia, which rely on the bay’s crab and oyster fisheries and its recreational opportunities. For significant portions of each year, however, those waters are dangerous. Each time it rains, city and suburban sewer systems send a deluge of storm water mixed with raw sewage from wastewater treatment pipes. Health officials warn against swimming until three days after storms. And in each spring planting season, runoff from farms laces the water with fertilizers and other chemicals that are thought to affect fish. On top of all that, home building, commercial development and farm expansion has robbed the watershed of forested land that can filter runoff that carries pollutants. Water quality is being considered as a possible factor in the disappointing results of the  latest blue crab survey . More than a quarter of the crabs perished in one of the worst winter die-offs recorded in the bay. Female crabs were hardest hit. Only 69 million were counted by Virginia and Maryland researchers, well below the threshold needed to sustain the region’s crab population. But according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 2012 State of the Bay report, there’s also good news: The bay’s waters are improving. The report credited a federal “pollution diet” orchestrated by the Environmental Protection Agency and implemented by watershed governments. The pollution diet is being challenged in court by the American Farm Bureau Federation, which argues that the plan should be voided because the watershed is under the jurisdiction of the states. The EPA responded that watershed states are guiding the effort and sought federal intervention only after voluntary agreements failed to restore the bay’s health. The farm bureau lost in federal court but has filed an appeal, backed by 21 attorneys general. The agreement signed Monday underscores the EPA’s argument that the states are taking charge, supporters said. In 90 days, the states and the District are to decide which jurisdiction will take the lead in trying to implement each priority of the agreement — land use, water restoration, scientific studies. In a year, they are expected to show the progress they have made toward those goals. Those two requirements were not part of prior agreements. “The next 90 days are critical,” said William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Previous agreements had no details. It was trust as opposed to ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’ I have guarded optimism. I want to trust and have them verify that trust.” More from The Washington Post: Winter did a number on Chesapeake Bay crabs A disrupt in our region’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan Attorneys general join fight to end Chesapeake Bay cleanup

Save the Bay: Slashes to EPA funding would reverse years of progress

The Trump administration’s plan to cut Environmental Protection Agency staff by a fifth and eliminate key programs raises troubling questions about support for the highly successful Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint [“White House could slash EPA staff 20%,” front page, March 2]. The White House proposal would reduce annual funding for EPA’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup project by 93 percent, from $73 million this fiscal year to $5 million in the next. The project represents a unique state/federal cleanup plan begun in 2010. It is working: The Chesapeake is getting better, and each partner plays a role. The states developed and implemented their own plans to reduce pollution and restore water quality. The EPA’s portion of the cleanup program coordinates the science, research and modeling to implement the blueprint and makes grants that fund pollution reduction. Today, pollution is down. Jobs have been created, human health protected and local economies improved. The Chesapeake Bay’s “dead zone” where aquatic life cannot thrive is getting smaller; crabs, oysters and underwater grasses are rebounding. But the bay is far from saved. A budget cut of this magnitude would reverse that progress. Bay restoration efforts have a long history of bipartisan support. Our elected officials have consistently pursued a legacy of clean water. Let’s make sure they succeed. ****William C. Baker** , Baltimore ** **The writer is president of the** **Chesapeake Bay Foundation.**

Blue crab numbers climbed slightly this year from a near-catastrophic low

For the second straight year, a harsh winter killed more than a quarter of adult blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. But a baywide survey of the crab population released Monday said there was encouraging news in spite of the blow. The overall population of the beleaguered crustacean climbed modestly from a catastrophic low last year. The yearly winter dredge survey conducted by Virginia and Maryland marine scientists estimates that 411 million crabs are in the main stem of the bay and its tributaries, a 38 percent increase from last year’s critically low population. Officials at Virginia’s Marine Resources Commission greeted the news as a positive sign but said it’s probably not enough to lift strict limits on the numbers of blue crabs that can be commercially fished. “This is a step in the right direction, but we are not out of the woods,” said Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner John M.R. Bull. Calling the gains modest, Bull said the state will continue to cautiously manage its crab stock. “More work needs to be done to boost us above modest abundance levels.” To recover, bay blue crabs need more breeding-age females, and by the dredge survey’s count there are a few more. Their numbers increased from a number that meant the stock was depleted, 68.5 million in 2014, to 101 million this year. The Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee ruled that a female population below 70 million is depleted and in danger of collapse, and any number below 215 million is unhealthy for the overall population. The bay’s spawning-age female stock has surpassed the healthy threshold only once in the past decade, and only twice in the past 15 years. Each year females embark on an epic downstream trek baywide after mating in spring and fall to release sacks of eggs where the bay’s fresh water meets the salty Atlantic Ocean in Virginia. They dodge commercial crabbers and predators through nearly the entire route. Like crabs throughout the bay, they bury themselves in mud and dirt in an attempt to survive winter. Blue crabs are a tropical species that originated in the Caribbean Sea and migrated south as far as Argentina and north to the Chesapeake Bay and beyond. They are established as far north as Massachusetts but are sensitive to cold. Last year, 28 percent died over the winter. This year’s winter was worse, killing 29 percent. Maryland and Virginia conduct the dredge survey at 1,500 sites in the bay watershed during the overwintering period, December through March. Females that manage to survive release their eggs in spring and return to various rivers and creeks upstream. Microscopic hatchlings spend their early lives at the mouth of the Atlantic before starting a deadly trek upstream in fall, whenmost are eaten by predators, including adult crabs. Maryland and Virginia have two options that will likely hurt watermen who depend on the commercial crab fishery: continue to conserve females by reducing the number that can be taken in the March-to-November open crab fishery, and continue to conserve juveniles in the hopes that they reproduce in higher numbers in 2016. This year’s spawning female population is still well below the level of 160 million to 215 million that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says is needed to lift the overall population to its estimated strength of 828 million in 1991. Juvenile crabs jumped from 199 million to 269 million, a 35 percent increase, and now comprise the bulk of the crab stock. Crab populations naturally go up and down, but the number taken at harvest has an effect. The overall population reached 828 million in 1991, but dove to 367 million the next year after watermen harvested 90 million pounds. History repeated itself a few years later in 1997, when watermen caught 77 million pounds after the stock rebounded to 680 million. The next year, the population dropped by 327 million. A 21-year high of 765 million was reached in two years ago, then plopped to 300 million after watermen removed 56 million pounds. Management is key, said Rom Lipcius, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science researcher who participates in the annual survey. “It’s likely the collective management actions since 2008 enhanced the population’s resilience.” Without it, Lipcius said, “The winter’s impact on the crab stock could have been much worse.”

Chesapeake Bay’s overall health remains largely unchanged, report finds

With the health of the country’s largest estuary largely unchanged over the past two years, environmentalists trying to clean up the Chesapeake Bay said they hope to work with Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) to improve the bay and an ecological system that is “dangerously out of balance.” In its 2014 State of the Bay Report, which was released Monday, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation found that the bay’s water quality has improved slightly but that the gains were offset by declines in the blue crab and rockfish populations. “While we can celebrate water-quality improvements, we must acknowledge that many local rivers, streams and the Chesapeake Bay are still polluted,” said William C. Baker, president of the foundation. “We continue to have polluted water, risks to human health and lost jobs — at huge societal costs.” The biennial report evaluates 13 measurements in three categories: pollution, habitat and fisheries. It gave the bay a score of 32, or a D-plus — the same it got  two years ago. The Chesapeake’s score has improved since Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) took office — but only slightly. The foundation gave the bay a score of 28, or a D-minus, in 2008. “We’re not happy about the score, but we’re glad to see that it’s going in the right direction,” Baker said. Baker said a major cause of pollution in the bay is an excess of phosphorus. That is largely due, he added, to tons of manure — much of it from chickens — that pollute creeks across the Eastern Shore, which has a large poultry industry. “The message is absolutely clear: Agriculture as a sector must do more. Agriculture is the largest sector of pollution coming into the bay, and fortunately it is the least expensive to control,” Baker said. “We need to get serious about controlling phosphorus.” He added that the Eastern Shore is the only part of the state where “our elected officials have continued to resist sound science by delaying new regulations to control chicken manure.” Before O’Malley leaves office this month, he plans to enact regulations intended to curb pollution from farms. Hogan has previously described the proposed rules as a “last-minute fulfillment of a political promise to a special-interest group.” A Hogan spokesman said in an e-mail that it’s time for a new approach. The study released Monday “is just the latest to conclude that the current strategy for restoring and protecting our greatest natural asset and America’s largest estuary is not working,” Adam Dubitsky said. He said Maryland farmers are well ahead of state and federal phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment reductions goals, while their counterparts in Pennsylvania and New York have yet to act in any meaningful way. Baker said water-quality indicators have improved by 10 percent since 2012. Dissolved oxygen and water clarity were responsible for the increase. The biggest declines were in fisheries, with the blue crab population dropping from 765 million to 297 million. The report said the number of adult female crabs dropped below the level considered depleted and forced states to cut back on catches to improve the chances of good reproduction. Rockfish are also down, but the number of oysters is up in Maryland. The bay-wide catch nearly hit 1 million bushels in the 2013-2014 season, the first time that benchmark has been approached since 1987, according to the report. Baker said members of the foundation look forward to working with Hogan to improve the bay and hope he will see the economic benefit it would bring to the state. Baker said that when he meets with Hogan, he plans to ask him to “embrace and implement” the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, which was established in 2010. It calls for a reduction in pollution to creeks, rivers and the bay and has been agreed upon by state and federal agencies and local governments. The report says the bay region is not on track to meet the blueprint’s goal, which calls on state and local governments to achieve specific reductions. “The Clean Water Blueprint is in place and working, but there are danger signs ahead,” Baker said. “We would urge [Hogan] to look at that, understand it and go after it with every element of his administration.”

As blue crabs rebound, Maryland takes chefs on field trips to promote them

Born and raised in Los Angeles, chef Ben Small had an outsider’s view of the Maryland blue crab. It came in a little plastic bucket, all meat and no claws, the shell ripped away long before it was shipped to the front door of the restaurant. But on a recent Friday, Small’s perspective changed. He bobbed and weaved in a boat on the Choptank River, off Cambridge on the Eastern Shore, the blue crabs’ front door. Newly relocated to the District, he was eager to see the living crab, to learn about its biology, and to understand why his restaurant, the Source at the Newseum, should buy local shellfish, showcase it on the menu and help sustain it. The field trip was courtesy of a fledgling effort by Maryland to pull chefs out of kitchens to behold the crabs in their Chesapeake Bay habitat and persuade them to buy the local product. Over the Memorial Day weekend, state officials also planned to launch a program called “True Blue,” to help consumers distinguish which restaurants use the Chesapeake Bay product for their Maryland crab cakes as opposed to using those imported from nations such as Venezuela and the Philippines. Forty restaurants have volunteered for the program, which allows participants to display a “True Blue” crab logo with the state flag on their menus if they agree to inspections, according to Bay Daily, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation publication. More than 300 chefs and retail seafood managers who had shunned pricier blue crabs have journeyed out to watch watermen pull wildlife from the Chesapeake Bay, said Steve Vilnit, director of Fisheries Marketing for the state Department of Natural Resources who runs the two-year-old program. Small’s outing focused on blue crabs, which are making a major comeback in the bay. Maryland’s and Virginia’s governors recently announced the largest crab baby boom in almost two decades, from 207 million juvenile crabs last year to nearly 600 million this year, according to a yearly winter dredge survey conducted by the states. The growth followed Virginia’s closure of the winter dredge season , when watermen dragged heavy traps along the marine floor, killing as many crabs as they caught. The dead were mostly pregnant female crabs. The overall population, estimated at a low of about 250 million when the winter dredge closed in 2007, is now more than 750 million. Seafood wholesalers hope that driving up the blue crab population will drive down their price. Maryland crabs cost about $5 per pound more than crabs from Latin America and Asia. On a bright, blue day, Small sailed with a 72-year-old waterman, watched highly skilled workers handpick steamed flesh from the shells of thousands of crabs at a processing plant, and listened to a sales pitch promoting the Maryland blue crab as unique — superior to its skinnier cousins from overseas. “It’s awesome for me to see the source, where it comes from. I understand the beast more,” Small said. “When I was cooking in L.A., we got the Maryland crab, but it was delivered. I was in Virginia one time and saw a blue crab skitter in the water and it was the craziest thing for me.” “I understand it more,” Small said as he headed back across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a van. “Seeing those workers pick the meat shows you how much love goes into the crab. It’s the whole cycle. It helps me understand the bigger picture.” On the boat with Small, John Rorapaugh, director of sustainability, green initiatives and sales for ProFish, a D.C.-based seafood supplier, could not stand still. “I love fresh seafood, man — at its freshest,” he blurted out. “I’m a seafood geek. This excites me!” Rorapaugh said the promotion of blue crab meat in the two-year program has had a positive effect on his business. Three years ago, ProFish sold about 500 pounds of crab meat to clients from New Jersey to Norfolk. Last year it sold more than 38,000 pounds in five months. “We want them to see why you should buy the Maryland crab,” Rorapaugh said. There’s no other crab like it, he said. To keep warm in the winter, Maryland crabs store fat, the yellow in their white meat. “That’s what gives the crab a different taste,” he said. “It has a richness to it. Fat in any recipe has a richness. If you use Venezuelan meat, the crab will be tasty, but it won’t have that richness.” Small said the fat is his favorite part of the blue crab. “I prefer to take a piece of bread and mop that fat out of the shell,” he said. “When I found out they sold tubs of fat, I said, ‘Oh, my God, I want that.’ ” In the past, the Olney Grille restaurant in suburban Maryland had never used blue crab. But since owner Dan Hudson took the tour in September, the restaurant has used nothing but in its crab cakes. “We get it on Wednesday and it’ll last a week. It’s so fresh,” Hudson said. “Flavorwise, you can’t even compare. All you have to do is open the lid and smell. It smells like the Chesapeake Bay.” Hudson preferred crab from other countries because it was cheaper, about $15 per pound compared with Maryland blue crab at $20. At 500 pounds a month, “it’s a couple of thousand dollars extra cost,” he said. A visit to J.M. Clayton, which processes crabs for retailers along the Atlantic seaboard, proved to Hudson that the crab was worth paying a little extra. He still uses other crab meat for bisque, a dip with spinach and atop sauteed rockfish, but not for cakes. “True Blue” is the brainchild of Vilnit, a former seafood wholesaler who used to hold invitation seminars where watermen explained seafood products and value to chefs. As a marketer for state natural resources, Vilnit put a new spin on that training. “Instead of bringing the fishermen to the chef, we bring the chef to fishermen,” he said. “The chefs are usually very excited about going out there. They teach me things I might not expect.” At J.M. Clayton, where women such as Charlotte Jones, 72, and Renee Denby, 41, remove meat by hand, chefs stare wide-eyed. Small said he had no idea that workers sit on stools for hours, carving lumps of crab meat with a tiny knife, to fill that bucket of crab meat that arrived at his restaurant in Los Angeles. He said he is now willing to pay extra for “the love that goes into the crab.” And that is the point, Vilnit said. “It’s not all about the price at this time. It’s about the story they can tell. They have a relationship with the crab.”

Chesapeake Bay’s health improving slightly, report says

Chesapeake Bay oysters are being resurrected from the dead. Blue crabs are roaring back. And after taking a huge blow from the monster storm called Sandy, the weakened bay proved in the fall that it could right itself and come back looking fresh. Except for a troubling decline in underwater grasses that help filter pollution and sustain marine life, many of the bay’s health indicators remained the same or improved since they were examined two years ago, according to the 2012 State of the Bay report released Wednesday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The foundation assessed the bay’s pollution levels, its habitat and its fisheries and graded it on a scale that ranged from a dismal one, which would mean it is dead, to the pie-in-the-sky 100, if it were once again the youthful, drop-dead gorgeous picture of health it was when European explorers arrived in the 1600s. “We’ll never see that again,” said William Baker, president of the foundation, which gave the bay a grade of 32, or D plus, a slight improvement from 2010 and much better than the 28, or D minus, from 2008. “But a 50 would be great. That would mean the bay is halfway to where it was historically.” The Chesapeake is the nation’s largest estuary, a 200-mile-long mix of fresh and salt water that supports more than 3,500 plant and animal species. Thirty-two is the highest grade the foundation has dished out since it was founded in the late 1960s. The lowest, 23, was issued in the early 1980s. Baker, the foundation’s president, attributed the slight health improvement reflected in the 2012 report to an earlier bay cleanup plan led by states. The report follows upbeat announcements from Virginia and Maryland that the oyster population, decimated by disease, is showing signs of a rebound. Virginia watermen harvested only 79,600 bushels of oysters in 2005 but hauled in more than 236,000 bushels in 2011. Maryland’s crop jumped from 26,400 to more than 121,000. Blue crabs were even more robust, as the number of juvenile crabs in both states shot up from 207 million in the winter dredge survey of 2011 to more than 600 million last year. The growth followed the closing five years ago of the winter dredge fishery, in which watermen harvested mostly pregnant females with a steel dragnet, killing as many as they caught. The overall crab population grew from 250 million when dredge fishing was closed to more than 750 million last year. A 2011 study by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that cleanup efforts have reduced oxygen- deprived events in the bay known as dead zones. Last year’s dead zone plague, which basically kills fish, oysters and crabs almost on contact, was the second-smallest since 1985. That was a big deal because the 2011 one-two punch of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, which muddied the water with huge loads of sediment, were expected to produce some of the largest dead zones ever. But that didn’t happen. It’s encouraging news, Baker said, but nothing to celebrate. “The bay is dangerously out of balance still. The good news is it’s headed in the right direction. The solution is exactly what’s in the bay blueprint,” he said. By that, he meant the Environmental Protection Agency’s most aggressive plan to date to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake, a two-year-old “pollution diet.” It compels the watershed’s six states and the District to significantly reduce the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that flows from cities and farms into streams, creeks and rivers that feed into the bay. Nitrogen and phosphorus cause an explosion in the growth of algae, which blooms and dies in a rapid summer cycle, sucking oxygen from the water. Sediment is basically dirt that can turn the water a muddy brown and smother bay grasses, destroying them. Those grasses are the reason the bay failed to achieve a higher grade in the foundation’s report. In 2010 and 2011, the levels of the grasses, the bay and its rivers dropped by 20 percent. The report blamed the die-off on warmer waters and heavy rains, much of it from storms, that washed sediment into the river from as far away as New York. Most sediment rushes downstream from the Susquehanna River’s origin in Cooperstown and collects in pools behind Maryland’s Conowingo Dam, near where the river empties into the bay at Havre de Grace. But the pools have filled up over the decades, and more and more new sediment is sloshing over the gate. During Tropical Storm Lee, the Susquehanna’s flow was so powerful that sluice gates had to be opened, allowing record amounts of sediment to sail through. In the four categories that comprise the bay’s habitat – including forest buffers, wetlands and resource lands that suck up storm water runoff and help stop storm surges — only underwater grasses fell dramatically in the foundation’s assessment. The EPA and state plan seeks to reduce the amount of the bay’s yearly sediment by 20 percent, to 6.4 billion pounds, by 2025. It also seeks to limit nitrogen by 25 percent, to 185 million pounds, and reduce phosphorus by 24 percent to 12.5 million pounds. But the EPA’s cleanup is being challenged by farmers, home builders and others who stand to bear the brunt of its costs, in the tens of billions. Water and sewer operators that must find billions of dollars to fund upgrades have complained that the timetable is too short. And environmental groups have challenged an EPA plan that allows groups such as farmers that meet pollution reduction goals to sell credits to others that do not, saying that the agency has no way of knowing whether the sellers actually reduced pollution. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation disagrees with the challenges. “The current bay plan is what’s going to get us to the next level,” Baker said. “I can’t tell you when it’s going to happen . . . whether it’s five years or 10 years. But we can’t stop now.”

A failing bay cleanup

THE CHESAPEAKE Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It is also one of the dirtiest. Though scientists have warned of the need to clean up the bay for years, very little headway has been made, and a recent Environmental Protection Agency assessment shows that states are not meeting agreed-upon pollution abatement targets. Leaders throughout the watershed should step up their cleanup efforts, and the EPA should hold accountable those who do not. In 1983, the six states in the Chesapeake’s watershed and the District first partnered with the federal government and pledged to save the bay. However, after three more agreements — the latest and strongest in 2014 — states still have not made the progress they have promised on reducing nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment levels in bay waters. States are supposed to be 60 percent of the way toward the EPA’s suggested levels by 2017 and complete the final stretch by 2025. Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania make up most of the bay’s watershed. No state is on track to hit all three targets, but while Maryland and Virginia lag only a little behind, Pennsylvania’s improvement appears almost nonexistent. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has been a champion of conservation. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), on the other hand, campaigned against environmental regulations and suspended the publication of important restrictions on phosphorus output, formulated under predecessor Martin O’Malley, before reaching a compromise with the state legislature in March to pass and publish modified regulations. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) is still unproven, succeeding an administration that largely ignored environmental issues. Leaders cannot afford to ignore the catastrophe in the Chesapeake. The EPA also should not let them. Because the 2014 agreement imposes reporting requirements, the agency finally has the capability to track states’ behavior and punish them with fines or restrictions if they miss the mark. When states fail to act, they jeopardize the health of not just blue terns and osprey but also their own residents. Pollution in the rivers and streams that feed into the estuary contaminates well water in the bay’s watershed. Cleaner waters also mean more tourism. That, along with other benefits from a healthier ecosystem, could save states more than $22 billion dollars per year, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Most state officials involved with the cleanup effort make a similar excuse for slow progress: They’re just getting started. But the struggle is 32 years old. Saving the bay should not be a partisan issue or the job of one governor or legislature. It should be a priority for anyone who has sworn an oath to serve the public interest, and one that spans administrations. **Read more here:** William D. Ruckelshaus: Why haven’t we cleaned up the bay? Will Baker: A manure solution for the Chesapeake Bay

Md. is getting its money’s worth from oyster recovery plan

Regarding the March 5 Metro article “Bay oyster population in recovery”: The assertion that Maryland has “poured $50 million into its oyster recovery effort with . . . little to show for the investment” was not accurate. This funding has sustained our beleaguered oyster industry, providing economic benefits to watermen, processors and local economies. Through the research and facilities funded by this investment, we determined that protecting high-quality oyster bars is critical to oysters’ reproduction and survival; that a more targeted, sustainable public oyster fishery was needed; and that expanding aquaculture in Maryland is key. We are also now able to generate hundreds of millions of oyster spat each year to support oyster recovery. Under Gov. Martin O’Malley’s leadership, in 2009 Maryland adopted a visionary oyster restoration and aquaculture development plan addressing these issues. Today, vast new sanctuaries in promising locations, a steady increase in aquaculture enterprises launched by watermen and others (prompted by a successful subsidized loan program and simplified permitting), and positive survival and disease news, give us every reason to be optimistic that we can restore this iconic native species — along with its enormous ecological and economic benefits — to Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay for the long term. ****John R. Griffin,** Annapolis** The writer is secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Winter did a number on Chesapeake Bay crabs, lowering the population again

The long and brutal winter was especially unkind to the iconic Chesapeake Bay blue crab. How cold was it? More than a quarter of the crustaceans perished in the icy water, one of the worst winter die-offs recorded in the bay. And in an alarming finding, female crabs were hit hardest. Only 69 million were counted in the annual winter crab survey, released Thursday by Virginia and Maryland. The number of females, a 12-year low, is not enough to sustain the overall population, officials said. The total number of crabs projected by the latest survey — 297 million — continued a downward trend that started last year, following the remarkably high estimate of 765 million in 2012. “This is disappointing news,” Virginia’s marine resources commissioner, John M.R. Bull, said in a statement. The two lower-bay states have two options: conserve females by reducing the number that can be taken in the March-to-November open crab fishery, or conserve this year’s bumper crop of juveniles “to increase their chances of reproducing in even larger numbers next year,” Bull said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said 160 million to 215 million females are needed to raise the crab population to its estimated 1991 strength of 828 million. Watermen who catch and sell crabs for a living will have to cut their harvests, which will lower the number of Maryland blue crabs available for grocers and restaurants. The winter dredge survey performed annually by the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is the primary means of determining how many crabs are in Virginia and Maryland waters. Scientists take samples at 1,500 sites in the bay watershed starting in December and ending in March. During that time, female crabs bury themselves in mud to wait out winter. Their immobility allows “scientists to develop, with good precision, estimates of the number of crabs present in the Bay,” according to a statement released by the agencies. The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population has swung between highs and lows — with mostly lows — since the survey started. Juvenile crabs were one of the few bright spots in this year’s survey, up 78 percent from a record low last year. But Maryland and Virginia officials were not upbeat about the situation, noting that juveniles remain at pre-2008 levels. That year, Maryland’s DNR, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the bi-state Potomac River Fisheries Commission launched a baywide stock-rebuilding program. Representatives of the three agencies, which oversee the crab fishery, plan to meet in the coming weeks to determine a way forward. One thing is nearly certain: Virginia’s winter dredge fishery, in which watermen harvest mostly females by scouring river bottoms, will remain closed for the sixth year. But Virginia watermen are still licensed to set 300,000 crab pots each year. In an attempt to better monitor the crab fishery, Maryland officials have encouraged watermen to use digital phones and tablet computers, instead of pen and paper, to more accurately log the numbers of males, females and juveniles caught and released. Crab populations fluctuate naturally, but the size of the harvest appears to have an effect. When the crab population reached 828 million in 1991, watermen harvested 90 million pounds, far too much, biologists argued. The next year, the population plunged to 367 million. Several years later, the pattern was repeated. In 1997, watermen harvested 77 million pounds from a stock that had rebounded to 680 million. The next year, the population fell to 353 million. Two years ago, the population hit 765 million, a 21-year high, and watermen took 56 million pounds. Last year’s harvest was only 37 million pounds, the lowest since 1990, according to the survey. But the frigid water took a huge toll. “Even though our 2008 conservation measures were designed to allow for naturally occurring fluctuations in crabs, these results are not what we had hoped to see,” said Tom O’Connell, Maryland’s fisheries director.

The resilient blue crab

_The writer is the president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation._ It’s clearly been a poor year for Chesapeake Bay blue crab harvests. Average catches just three years ago were as much as twice as what they are now. That is where Angus Phillips [“It’s now or never for blue crabs,” Sunday Opinion, July 27] and I agree. Where we disagree is what to do about it. Phillips called for a moratorium on crabbing. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) does not. Like many, we believe in managing fisheries through science, not quick-fix schemes. As my eighth-grade history teacher used to say, “Beware of simple answers to complex problems.” While a moratorium may be tempting in its simplicity, the CBF and most scientists believe that limits on the harvesting of female crabs are biologically appropriate for such a resilient species (which is far different from the striped bass, for which the CBF was a moratorium advocate). This approach will also have the added benefit of maintaining jobs and avoiding the economic devastation to communities like Smith and Tangier islands. Blue crab reproductive success from year to year depends on many factors. Weather is one. Last winter’s cold weather killed an estimated 28 percent of the bay’s crabs. Pollution also can cause habitat loss. Bay grasses — great places for young crabs to hide from predators — are currently at only 20 percent of historic levels. The bay’s dead zones kill the creatures that crabs rely on for food. We believe that only a comprehensive crab management plan that addresses pollution, habitat and harvest will provide for a long-term sustainable fishery. While there is plenty of reason for concern, there is also a bright note this crabbing season: Early results from Maryland and Virginia show an encouraging number of young crabs. Phillips rhetorically asked whether the CBF is aware of the situation. Of course we are. The CBF’s scientists have been in communication with the Maryland, Potomac and Virginia regulatory agencies responsible for blue crab management. Our senior fisheries scientist also is a member of the Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team, which oversees blue crab management baywide. Phillips said he could not find one word about the issue on our Web site. I invite him to look again. A search of our Web site turned up more than 1,400 mentions of crabs — their importance, value and plight. In May, we published “Blue News,” a blog posted soon after the annual crab survey results raised concerns about the population. It can be found at www.cbf.org/bluenews. Finally,  Phillips stated that the CBF was raising money for a new wing at our Annapolis  Environmental Center , the  world’s first LEED platinum building . We are not. He also called it a palace. That is an odd description for a building that dramatically cuts energy and water use, reduces human pollution through zero-discharge composting toilets and is built inside and out with sustainable materials.

Crabbing the truth: McAuliffe, Hogan spar over blue crab origins

RICHMOND — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, never stingy with superlatives or shy about boosterism, has been bragging lately in a way that has neighboring Maryland steamed. Maryland’s signature delicacy — the blue crab — really hails from Virginia, McAuliffe declared on a radio show last week. He proudly repeated the claim Wednesday. “You know, Maryland talks about their crabs,” McAuliffe (D) said on WRVA radio. “If anyone from Maryland is listening, I want to be very clear: All the crabs are born here in Virginia and they end up, because of the current, being taken there [to Maryland]. So really, they should be Virginia crabs.” The claim drew swift scrutiny from PolitiFact, an organization normally dedicated to separating meatier political truth from fiction. It also roiled Baltimore opinion writers, and Maryland’s crab-loving governor, Larry Hogan (R). The hardest part to swallow for a people defined culinarily by their “Maryland” crab cakes and “Maryland” crab soup? McAuliffe knew what he was talking about. Blue crabs are not picky about where they mate, and they do so all over the Chesapeake Bay. But when it comes time to release their larvae, only Virginia will suffice. Known as zoea and no bigger than the head of a pin, the larvae can survive only in the salty waters at the mouth of the Chesapeake, which is in — you guessed it — Virginia. “Basically, all crabs are hatched as larvae in the lower bay, which is Virginia,” said Romuald N. Lipcius, a professor at the College of William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Thomas Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, concedes not only that all mother crabs release their offspring in Virginia, but that they go to a lot of trouble to do so. The crabs have the ability to swim — in fact, their Latin name, Callinectes sapidus, translates to “beautiful swimmer.” But for some reason, they walk — and walk and walk — traversing the entire length of the bay if they have to, to make sure their babies are born in Virginia. “If they start in the bay above the Bay Bridge, they will walk the 200 miles down to the bay mouth,” said Miller, director of the center’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. And so Virginia, mother of presidents, also has maternal dibs on every single one of the Chesapeake’s blue crabs. Not that the crabs stick around all that long. The little pinheads, which have long trunks and look nothing like crabs, drift out to sea for months, traveling 50 to 100 miles off the shores of Maryland, North Carolina and, yes, Virginia. They come back to the Chesapeake’s salty Virginia waters looking like tiny lobsters and measuring about a quarter of an inch long. They linger there, in the shelter of sea grasses and oyster reefs, through one more transformation, after which they measure up to an inch across and finally look like crabs. Then they move on across the bay — with about half of them heading to Maryland, and the rest remaining in Virginia. McAuliffe’s claim stood up to PolitiFact’s scrutiny, and he repeated it Wednesday on WTOP, joking that Hogan should mark every Chesapeake Bay crab with a stamp reading: “Made in Virginia.” Hogan was unmoved, said Matthew Clark, his communications director. “Like most Virginians with any sense, eventually the crabs move north to Maryland, where the waters are much more inviting and hospitable,” Clark said. He also noted that McAuliffe took some liberties Wednesday, on the delicate subject of crab procreation. All Chesapeake Bay crabs are born in Virginia, but they are not all “conceived” there, as McAuliffe said on WTOP. “There is a certain amount of breeding that takes place in Maryland waters,” Clark said. “It’s not just Virginia that’s for lovers.” None of which answers this central question: Why are these creatures called “Maryland” crabs, if about half of them never set claw in the Old Line State? Miller said the crabs are named for Maryland because 60 percent of the commercial catch has been in that state. “If you go for tuna to eat, you don’t care where it was born, you care where it was caught, because that’s an indication of whether it’s fresh or not,” he said. One of Maryland’s leading crab authorities, Baltimore chef John Shields, has another theory: Maryland is known for crabs because it cooks them better. Which is why the owners of Wildfire, a fancy Tysons Corner restaurant, brings Shields to Northern Virginia every year to demonstrate for diners the art of eating steamed Maryland crabs: with a mallet, atop brown butcher paper. “Just about everywhere south of Maryland — Virginia, the Carolinas, down to the Gulf — they boil the crabs, which takes all of the flavor away,” said Shields, who is the author of “Chesapeake Bay Cooking” and was set to appear at Wildfire on Wednesday night . Instead of a Southern-style crab boil with Zatarain’s seasoning, Shields steams his crabs with Old Bay. “We know how to treat them,” he said. “They might be born in Virginia, but they use their crab instincts and they head a little bit north — for the sweeter waters of Maryland.”

The whole region wins when we improve the Chesapeake Bay

_Daniel Sze, a member of the Falls Church City Council, is the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Chesapeake Bay and Water Resources Policy Committee chairman._ When you think of the Chesapeake Bay, maybe you imagine a weekend away sailing or fishing, exploring lighthouses or enjoying crabs or rockfish. Investments in the health of the bay watershed ensure that these things can be enjoyed by all. But you don’t have to cross the Bay Bridge to see these investments at work. Consider our own local gems, the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. These rivers and area streams are also being cleaned up thanks to bay restoration efforts, making metropolitan Washington a better place to live, work and play. Aquatic vegetation and native species such as the American shad are rebounding. Bald eagles are again nesting along our rivers. Harmful algal blooms aren’t threatening the Potomac, the primary source of drinking water for millions in this region. Residents, employers and tourists are drawn to our waterways, as is evident by the redevelopment of the District’s Southwest Waterfront, the boom at National Harbor in Prince George’s County and the restoration of the Four Mile Run area in Alexandria and Arlington. These accomplishments have been decades in the making. Last year, the bay received a better grade on its annual report card than it had in more than 15 years, but there is much work to be done. The Chesapeake Bay watershed is vast, so progress has been possible only because of federal, state and local partnerships. Improvements are largely thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay restoration program, with the support of 20 other federal programs, six states and the District, 1,800 localities, 27 academic institutions and 60 organizations. The bay is only as healthy as the waterways that flow into it, so restoration work also includes investments by local governments, water utilities, companies and residents. Wastewater treatment plants, including Alexandria Renew Enterprises, have been upgraded and are pioneering methods of energy recovery, wastewater byproduct recycling and innovative financing. DC Water uses “green” century bonds to help finance its Clean Rivers Project, including building enormous tunnels that capture stormwater and wastewater for treatment. Local governments are also exploring innovative ways to reduce stormwater runoff via permeable pavement and retention gardens, among other actions. In my own city of Falls Church, two streams, Pearson and Coe branches, were restored from a channeled or piped creek to a more natural habitat. These projects improve water quality, and we all enjoy these stream valley parks that have been brought back to life. Green infrastructure jobs are being created, too. These investments are paying off, but we’re at a crucial stage. Local governments and water utilities will continue to do their part, but as a key player in this region, the federal government must also do its part. If federal funding for the bay is reduced or eliminated, we will lose the primary glue holding the many partners together, and our waters will get worse. Federal involvement ensures that all partners will be at the table for future planning. Everyone wins when we work together for clean water. **Read more about this issue:** J. Charles Fox and Jeff Corbin: The leaders we elect will seal the Chesapeake Bay’s fate Hedrick Belin and Ed Merrifield: Recipe for a healthy Potomac The Post’s View: Mr. Pruitt’s tepid commitment to clean up the Chesapeake Bay Chip Bowling: Farmers can help clean up the Chesapeake The Post’s View: The Trump administration’s attack on the Chesapeake Bay

In Chesapeake Bay, striped bass reproduction hits record low

The number of young striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay fell to a record low this year, a drastic decline from a near-record high the year before, state officials reported Tuesday. State biologists checking Maryland’s part of the bay found the fewest newly spawned striped bass that they’ve tallied in any year since annual surveys for the fish began 59 years ago, the Department of Natural Resources reported. Maryland’s state fish, also known as rockfish, is closely monitored because it supports a multimillion-dollar recreational and commercial fishing industry that employs thousands. The species is widely regarded as one of the bright spots in the 30-year effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay; its population rebounded from near-collapse in the 1980s after a five-year fishing moratorium. Although state officials said the decline probably was the result of unfavorable weather during spawning season, some recreational fishing advocates urge vigilance. “We expected the numbers to be low, but by no means did we expect them to be this low,” said Tony Friedrich, executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland. “It does concern us.” The upper bay is the spawning ground and nursery for three-fourths of the striped bass that migrate along the East Coast. In the Maryland survey, the number of little striped bass counted in each haul during a three-month sampling of traditional spawning areas was more than 90 percent below the long-term average. Virginia scientists reported similarly poor reproduction in their survey of the southern portion of the bay. DNR officials said there appeared to be plenty of adult striped bass returning to the bay’s rivers to spawn this year but unusually warm, dry weather last winter and spring spelled doom for their offspring. Eric Durell, leader of the department’s striped bass survey, said newly hatched larvae are particularly sensitive to environmental conditions such as the flow, clarity and temperature of the water. In past years when ample rain fell around spawning season, the number of juvenile fish found was higher, he noted, but this year saw near-record low flows in bay tributaries. “We think that this year we just did not have the flow necessary for larval survival,” Durell said. Similar fish, such as white perch, river herring and yellow perch, also had poor reproduction this year, bolstering scientists’ belief that weather was to blame for the striped bass’s decline. As with striped bass, those species return to spawn in rivers after spending much of their lives in the Atlantic Ocean. State officials said reproduction varies from year to year, so even this extremely poor showing was no cause to clamp down on fishing. “One year of reproductive failure isn’t itself a disaster for a species like this,” said Durell. “We’re not overfished; we’re not overfishing.” He said that the number and age range of adult fish remains good, but he noted that scientists are in the midst of taking a new look at the health of the striped bass population, which should be finished next year. Last year’s survey found the fourth-highest number of juvenile striped bass ever, easing anxiety about the species’ sustainability. Spawning survival had been subpar in four of the previous five years, and many adult fish in the bay have been suffering from mycobacteriosis, a disease that some have linked to a shortage of food for striped bass, particularly menhaden. Until the 2011 uptick, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates fishing in coastal waters, was considering a proposal to reduce the striped bass harvest by 40 percent. Lynn Fegley, assistant state fisheries director, said the commission’s striped bass management plan does not require harvest reductions unless there are three years of poor reproduction in a row. Commission members have talked about increasing conservation efforts for striped bass, Fegley acknowledged, but she said the current plan has been successful at sustaining the fish population despite reproduction ups and downs. William Goldsborough, senior fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a member of the Atlantic States commission, said the drop is “certainly something to keep an eye on . . . but I’m not terribly concerned.” Independent fisheries experts said the poor reproduction this year was not cause for panic, because striped bass can spawn repeatedly during their life span and good years can balance out the bad. “This is a fish that has many times at bat,” said David Secor, a fisheries ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences. “It can wait out a year or two or three, maybe more.” But “if we have more of these years,” Secor added, “it means we could have diminished fisheries.”

Good: sturgeon return. Bad: rockfish fall. Ugly: a killer plant comes back to the bay

The fishermen on Marshyhope Creek knew they weren’t losing their minds. For years, they told the Maryland Department of Natural Resources that they had spotted sturgeon, fish so rare it was thought the species was nearly extinct. But biologists who rushed to the creek near Federalsburg on the Eastern Shore came up with nothing when they tossed out a gill net. Then suddenly, a five-foot-long sturgeon leaped into Bill Harris’s fishing boat in April of last year, according to the Bay Journal. And finally this month, when biologists Chuck Stence and his colleagues from DNR returned, they caught eight sturgeon. That modest haul of sturgeon was a positive end to a summer of good, bad and ugly developments in the Chesapeake Bay. Any landing of sturgeon, which haven’t been caught by fishermen in the watershed since the early 1970s, is a good thing. But a troubling drop in the abundance of spawning female striped bass, Maryland’s state fish, is bad. And for ugly, there’s the recent discovery in Virginia of a killer plant that was thought to have been eradicated from the Potomac River and the presence of one of the bay’s worst fish-killing “dead zones” on record. It is a sign of troubling times in America’s largest estuary, even in the midst of an aggressive anti-pollution effort that is in its fourth year. The bay is beset by man-made waste and overfishing. And it is laced with diseases that take the lives of countless oysters and striped bass and with chemicals that are changing the sex of male smallmouth bass. But the sturgeon is a sign that the bay can recover. And even though the numbers of striped bass are down, they’re not at the historic lows of the mid-1980s, when several states were forced to halt fishing to help them recover. On a positive note, Stence said, more sturgeon than anyone realized might have been in the creek all along, even though none was caught. “I think a lot of it had to do with the nets and the size of the nets we were using,” Stence said, explaining that previous nets were too weak. “They’re a big, strong fish, and they can just bull their way through.” Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service listed four varieties of Atlantic sturgeon populations as endangered — the New York Bight, Carolina, South Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay. Worried that sturgeon were gone for good, the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin backed a plan to use 60 domesticated Atlantic sturgeon, mostly from New York’s Hudson River, to restock the Potomac. But a federal endangered listing works to preserve the genetic purity of the animal it seeks to protect, meaning that tame Hudson River sturgeon being bred at a Maryland hatchery couldn’t be released by state officials to possibly mess around with wild Potomac River sturgeon. None of that will matter if sturgeon from other areas mate in Chesapeake tributaries, including the Potomac. “They’re migrating fish,” Stence said. “It’s amazing how far they can travel.” State scientists are testing the captured fish to see if their DNA matches that of 3,000 sturgeon from various rivers biologists released 18 years ago. They fitted the fish with radio tags before release to trace their migration in the Atlantic and back to rivers. There are far more striped bass, also known as rockfish, than sturgeon, but still there aren’t enough. Stripers, as they’re also called, are Maryland’s state fish, as symbolic as the iconic blue crab. The number of females of spawning age has fallen and is close to a threshold where the species is considered “not recovered.” And the reason for that, said Tom O’Connell, the director of the Fisheries Service at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, is cause for concern. Fishery experts have noticed that the stock falls during winters with little rain or snow. Little striped bass eat plankton, which feed on nutrients that run off wetlands in precipitation. Baby fish can’t become big fish when they starve. On top of that, big rockfish eat menhaden, a species that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said was in danger of depletion when it greatly limited the menhaden catch in 2012. Finally, many rockfish are stricken with a disease that attacks their internal organs. In other words, they are being hit from all sides. “Looking at the Chesapeake Bay specifically, striped bass prefer menhaden, which is really low,” O’Connell said. So they start eating crabs, “but they’re not as nutritious as menhaden,” he said. “Striped bass are more susceptible to get diseased when they’re distressed, and that’s happening.” But, O’Connell said, commercial watermen and recreational fishermen who are afraid the population is about to crater are overlooking important factors. The number of female rockfish in the bay today is about the same as the population in 1995, when officials declared that the species was back from being nearly wiped out a decade earlier. The lady fish are capable of incredible things — including producing tons of juveniles, O’Connell said. Biologists following trends offered a projection: The population might drop “for maybe two years, but the trajectory starts to go up again because of expected better production — not as good as managers want, but up,” he said. The one thing the bay’s managers want to completely die off is the invasive water chestnut. It shoots up from the river bottom, flowers in a way that blocks sunlight from native plants, and dies, forming muck that contributes to oxygen-depleted dead zones. A small water chestnut patch was spotted on the Potomac in July at Pohick Bay Regional Park in Virginia. “It was kind of alarming, considering what was needed to eradicate the plant in the 1940s and ’50s,” said Curtis Dalpra, a spokesman for the interstate commission. Water chestnut plants “can spread from few square feet to hundreds in weeks,” Dalpra said, and seeds are viable for a dozen years. The Army Corps of Engineers spent months eradicating it at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Virginia game officials and the U.S. Geological Survey are studying the problem and considering an option as simple as the lyrics of a Bob Marley song: “Every time I plant a seed, he say kill it before it grow.” Related: A desperate try to restock the Potomac’s sturgeon

Sauna-like heat, low rain help keep Chesapeake Bay clean

The weirdly mild winter, the dry and toasty spring, and the hottest summer heat wave on record apparently had at least one upside: a cleaner Chesapeake Bay. Last year around this time, the bay was smothered by one of its largest dead zones — low-oxygen water caused by pollution where fish and plants cannot survive. This year, with so little rain to move pollution from farms and city streets into waterways, the zone “absolutely is much smaller,” said Bruce Michael, director of the resource assessment service for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Dead zones commonly happen in summer after winter snowmelt and heavy spring rains wash sediment and nitrogen and phosphorus from farm animal waste, fertilizers and urban street garbage into the bay’s tributaries, such as the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers. Six states — Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York, as well as the District — sit in the bay watershed. Nutrient pollution feeds algae blooms that grow and die quickly, decomposing into a thick black goo. Microbes eat decomposed algae during summer and suck out oxygen in the process. Dead zones usually dissipate in September. The benefits of the year’s sizzling heat pretty much end at the bay, the beach and your community swimming pool. Farmers are worried that record-high temperatures and dry conditions will ruin corn crops well before the harvest. Elderly residents on a limited budget struggle to stave off deadly heat with open windows and electric fans. In the west, dry trees and brush are kindling waiting for a lightning strike or a match. But rain is a Jekyll-and-Hyde element for the Chesapeake Bay, adding huge amounts of fresh water but also motor oil that drips from cars onto streets, lawn fertilizer spread liberally by homeowners, and animal manure from household pets and livestock such as chickens and cows in one of the most populous watersheds in the nation. At the end of June last year, a dead zone stretched about 83 miles from the Baltimore Harbor to the mid-channel region in the Potomac River, according to the DNR and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. In July, it crept beyond the Potomac into Virginia, threatening to become the worst dead zone ever. “It potentially would’ve been the worst if Hurricane Irene had not come in and redistributed the water, mixing it up so you didn’t have stratification with good water on the top and everything below nine meters is devoid of oxygen,” Michael said. Hurricane Irene struck last year in late August, followed by Tropical Storm Lee in early September. But state monitoring that started last month amid record-breaking heat and abnormally dry conditions showed a dramatic improvement from this time last year — very few low-oxygen areas in the bay’s main stem so far, “better than average,” Michael said. About 12 percent of water volume in Maryland’s portion of the bay was low in oxygen in June, compared with more than 30 percent last year. “We were kind of predicting this, because we had relatively low flows in winter and spring . . . not much runoff at all,” Michael said. This year’s dryness in a warming climate has complemented a joint federal and state effort to clean the Chesapeake, the nation’s largest estuary, biologists said. The 200-mile-long bay supports more than 3,500 plant and animal species. Many of the watershed’s fisheries play an important role in the Atlantic Ocean’s food chain. A study of the bay’s water quality last year showed that a major pollution- reduction effort is improving its health. Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that the size of dead zones have generally fallen since pollution limits were implemented in the 1980s. Researchers studied water-quality data for the bay for 50 years starting in 1949 and said the findings are evidence that aggressive efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency and states in the watershed are making a difference. As part of a cleanup that costs bay states hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade waste-   water-treatment plants and better regulate building projects, among other things, the EPA hopes by 2025 to reduce the daily flow of nitrogen into the bay by 25 percent, to 186 million pounds; of phosphorus by 24 percent, to 12.5 million pounds; and of sediment by 20 percent, to 6.45 billion pounds. “The rate of the decline tracks with the rate of reduction of nitrogen and other pollution coming into the bay,” said Donald Boesch, president of the U-Md. Center for Environmental Science and an expert on dead zones. “The bay is responding and should respond the way our models tell us,” he said, adding that results take time. “We have to recognize that there is lag between what we do on land and what happens in the bay.” House Republicans have proposed rolling back the EPA’s plan. Interest groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation have said the cleanup plan is too aggressive, forcing farmers to pay for pollution-reduction measures that cut into their meager income. The EPA plan requires farmers and builders of housing subdivisions to pay for costly conservation measures to curb nutrient and sediment pollution that has gone virtually unchecked for decades, environmentalists say. The Home Builders Association joined the farm federation in challenging the EPA’s authority to implement its “pollution diet.” The federal lawsuit is pending. And because nature’s course is unpredictable, the dry summer’s helping hand in decreasing pollution could easily become a fist that worsens other problems. A lack of rain and freshwater often lead to an increase in the bay’s salinity level. Two diseases that plague oysters, Dermo and MSX, thrive in saline. Biologists call the diseases a nightmare because they kill oysters by the bushel just as they become adults. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Boesch said of the climate. So many thousands of oysters have died from the diseases and pollution that Maryland and Virginia created huge sanctuaries against fishing to protect them from being wiped out. But Michael said he is not worried — yet. “We’re certainly in the range we’ve had historically with salinity,” Michael said. But the peak usually comes in August and September. “Although we’re seeing higher levels, it’s certainly not unprecedented. In drought conditions, it can get really high, so we’ll wait and see.”

Calvert man snags rare light-blue crab

John Peake was enjoying Father’s Day crabbing at Battle Creek with his father and brother when he netted what he thought was a plastic bag and pulled it out of the water. To his surprise, what Peake had caught was a “baby blue-colored” blue crab. Most people recognize a blue crab by its bright blue claws and olive-green shell, but the male crab Peake took out of Battle Creek was entirely light blue. Peake, 29, of Dares Beach in Calvert County said he has been crabbing in parts of the Patuxent River for about 20 years. His father, Richard Peake Sr., and brother, Richard Peake Jr., decided to join him June 20. “I go out crabbing every weekend ,and they wanted to go out and catch some crabs for Father’s Day, and I decided to take them out on the boat,” Peake said. The three men already had netted half a bushel of crabs and were working on filling the bushel when they pulled in their odd catch, Peake said. He said he quickly contacted the Calvert Marine Museum, and officials confirmed that the crab was indeed a blue crab. He said he donated the crab to the museum for everyone to see. “It’s a very rare thing, from what I hear,” Peake said of the light-colored crab, “so I figured I’d let everyone else enjoy.” Museum curator of estuarine biology David Moyer confirmed that Peake’s catch was a six-inch blue crab and said the unusual light-colored shell could have been an abnormal color pattern, a “regularly occurring mutation,” or caused by the crab being exposed to something when it was molting, which is when a crab sheds its shell. Peake shared a picture of the crab on the Department of Natural Resources’ Maryland Angler’s Log Web site. A DNR official responded to Peake’s post and wrote that a “brilliant blue colored blue crab is caused by a genetic defect causing an imbalance of proteins in the shell,” but no matter what color the crab is, it will turn red when coloration proteins break down during cooking. Moyer said that the crab’s color was “very unusual” and that the museum already has another abnormally colored crab. He said the second blue crab “has these ginormous white claws, and they stand out more dramatically than any blue crab that I’ve seen before.” Moyer said these coloration patterns are seen in only one out of hundreds of thousands or millions of adult crabs in the wild. Moyer said both crabs are displayed in the Broomes Island tank at the museum for the public to view for the duration of its life, which is typically two to three years.

Chesapeake’s blue crab population grows 35 percent; DNR predicts ‘robust’ season

Marylanders could have an easier time finding — and affording — local crabs this summer, a survey of the Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population suggests. There are more than 550 million blue crabs in the bay, an increase of more than a third over this time last year and one of the highest counts of the past two decades, according to state officials. They credit favorable weather and past harvest restrictions for a second straight year of strong growth. “We fully anticipate a robust crab season this year,” said Dave Blazer, fisheries survey director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Officials plan to explore whether the increasing number should prompt regulators to loosen harvest restrictions or lengthen the crabbing season. Scientists and conservationists said that while the survey results are encouraging, they don’t eliminate concerns about the health of the bay and the blue crabs’ reproduction. “We are in a much better place than we were,” said Thomas Miller, director of the state’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons. But he said the crab population isn’t yet “up to consistent levels of abundance that will support a sustainable fishery into the long term.” Still, members of the seafood industry are optimistic about the season ahead. Several said they have been encouraged based on early hauls since the season’s start on April 1. Harvests are usually light until May, but crabbers for Maryland Crabs Delivered caught 40 bushels in two days in the Chincoteague Bay, co-owner Katie Schilpp said. She is hoping for strong harvests in Kent Narrows and the Chester River by next month. Other crabbers in the lower Chesapeake Bay have seen April harvests at a level they get only about once a decade, said Bunky Chance, president of the Talbot County Watermen’s Association. “We all looked at that and said, ‘Well, that’s a good start,’ ” Chance said. “Now, upon hearing results of this study, we’re that much more hopeful.” A larger supply of Maryland crabs could mean lower prices for consumers. Crabs are typically at their most expensive this time of year because so many are still hibernating in mud. Last April, Maryland Crabs Delivered sold its first harvests for as much as $275 a bushel for its heaviest male crabs. This month, they are offering them for $195, Schilpp said. Neal Gaffney, owner of Gaffney’s Back Fin in Baltimore’s Highlandtown neighborhood, said that so far, he is keeping his prices the same as last year’s: from $30 for a dozen small crabs to $110 for a dozen colossals. But if harvests are plentiful and regulators allow crabbers more chances to put their crab pots out, that could influence the market, he said. State Natural Resources officials plan to confer with watermen, conservationists and other stakeholders to consider whether changes to the length of the crabbing season or limits on harvesting female crabs are warranted. Watermen are generally limited in how many female crabs they can harvest, and they’re prohibited from harvesting any females late in the season. Chance said watermen welcome those discussions. In the past, they have accepted new restrictions with the understanding that regulations could be loosened if crab populations rebounded, he said. Scientists, though, said changes should come only after a careful analysis. They say people shouldn’t assume that the survey numbers mean the crab population can handle a bigger harvest. In 2012, for example, surveys showed a record number of juvenile crabs, but so many of them died that it didn’t translate into a long-term population boom. “We have to understand whether this brings the population . . . above a threshold which suggests it’s no longer overfished,” said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. In coming weeks, state scientists will continue to analyze the data gathered in the survey. Researchers who dredged some 1,500 sites in the Maryland and Virginia portions of the bay this winter found the strongest growth in the population of adult male crabs, which more than doubled in the past year to a population of 91 million. They found that the number of female crabs that will be old enough to spawn this year nearly doubled, reaching 194 million. That’s below a target of 215 million considered key for a healthy population, but it’s nonetheless encouraging because the number of adult female crabs is considered an important barometer for population growth. It’s the fourth-highest population count in 20 years. Researchers said a relatively mild winter meant fewer crabs died than in recent seasons, when portions of the bay froze over. The results show a continuing rebound in the crab population. Last year’s survey found 38 percent growth over the previous winter, and the 2015 crab season that followed brought a 42 percent increase in the baywide harvest. “I had a hunch that we were going to have an uptick in the population from what I saw at the end of last year and the fact that we had a decent winter,” said Richard Young, co-owner of Coveside Crabs in Dundalk. Although crabs typically become scarce by October, last season they were plentiful until the season’s end in mid-December, he said. Even if the population growth translates to a larger harvest in Maryland, imported crabs still dominate the local crab economy, said Lee Carrion, who owns Coveside Crabs along with Young. If crabs from North Carolina and Louisiana are also plentiful, that could force Maryland crabbers to lower their prices, too. “Even if we have an excellent season, we’re still going to have less than they can bring in from out of state,” Carrion said. ** — Baltimore Sun  **

The blue crab population can be saved without a moratorium

Regarding Angus Phillips’s July 27 Sunday Opinion commentary, “It’s now or never for blue crabs”: The way we manage the fishery is not working. Despite two decades of regulations, crabs have again reached dangerously low levels. But a moratorium isn’t the answer. We can have a sustainable blue crab harvest in the Chesapeake Bay if we make real changes. Virginia watermen have asked regulators for baywide total catch limits, allocations among the states and licensed fishermen and greater harvesting accountability. This would help conserve and stabilize the crab population and give our industry predictability. Let us try a pilot program that centers on conservation and fishing for dollars, not volume. Give watermen an annual limit, and they will fish when the profit margin is the greatest and not fish for the less expensive small and female crabs that we need to protect. At the same time, let’s help the bay and watermen by doing more to reduce pollution from fertilizers, pesticides and stormwater runoff. This approach has been successful with other species around the country, including here on the Chesapeake. It’s how we manage rockfish. Why not blue crab? Our crab population is not too low to rebound. ****Ken Smith** , Heathsville, Va.** The writer is president of the Virginia Waterman’s Association.

GOP, Democratic lawmakers vow to defeat Trump plan cutting Chesapeake Bay funds

The budget proposal released Tuesday by President Trump doubles down on his promise to eliminate Chesapeake Bay cleanup dollars, increasing the pressure on key Virginia and Maryland lawmakers to rescue the funding. The region has four lawmakers on the powerful House and Senate appropriations committees — Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.), C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) and Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.). Democrats and Republicans in both states have expressed support for cleaning up the bay, but it is ultimately up to them to persuade GOP leaders in Congress to set aside money for the Environmental Protection Agency’s restoration effort. “It’s like motherhood and baseball,” said Ruppersberger, who represents an area of central Maryland along the bay’s northern edge. “It’s a resource, it’s part of our life. It’s part of what we do and what we stand for.” The $73 million program unites six states in the bay watershed — Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York — and the District of Columbia in a comprehensive program to reduce pollution with the aim of improving water quality. Environmental scientists say it is working. This month, they gave the bay a “C” for overall health in 2016, the second-highest grade the ecosystem has received in the three decades since officials started keeping score. Bay restoration advocates say the watershed generates $1 trillion in economic activity through tourism and commercial and recreational fishing and boating. But the 275-page spending plan released by the White House on Tuesday makes no mention of the environmental or fiscal impacts of zeroing out the funding. Instead, the document devotes half a page to the importance of eliminating federal funding for what it calls “geographic programs,” including cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes region. The goal of the change is to “refocus” the EPA “on core national work,” the document says, adding that federal funding was being used to “perform local ecosystem protection and restoration activities, which are best handled by local and state entities.” (Officials in states fighting budget shortfalls have said they cannot duplicate the money and authority of the federal program.) Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who lives on a Chesapeake tributary and is the father of a waterman, said the only way to make sure watershed states work together is through federal oversight. “I’m alarmed,” he said. “I am adamant that the Chesapeake Bay program is critical to water quality. It is a federal role when you look at the bay being an economic engine, and this revolves around interstate commerce.” The budget also eliminates the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, a Department of Agriculture initiative that works with farmers to reduce harmful soils from being washed into the estuary, the largest in North America. Last year, the Chesapeake Bay program funneled about $9.3 million to Virginia, $9 million to Maryland and $2.6 million to the District for state, local and nonprofit projects and staffers. The remainder went to the other state and local governments, nonprofit entities and schools. Trump’s initial spending plan — the “skinny budget” released in March — confirmed advocates’ fears that the bay program was at risk under EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. As Oklahoma attorney general in 2014, Pruitt joined an unsuccessful legal challenge to the cleanup program, arguing that only states — not the EPA — had the authority to control pollution levels in the bay. “Truly, the only word I can come up with is incomprehensible as to why they would zero out a program that has bipartisan support, is clearly science-based and is working,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker. But advocates see a glimmer of hope from a bay budget battle earlier this year in which lawmakers ensured that the cleanup program would continue to be fully funded through the end of September. Van Hollen said that the short-term win was a result of a partnership between lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia and those in the Great Lakes region, including Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “We are going to fight them tooth and nail,” said Van Hollen, who was a co-chairman of the Chesapeake Bay caucus when he was in the House. “I think we will be successful in reversing this effort.” Advocates say Republicans are powerful allies in this fight because they are willing to put aside loyalty to a president from their own party when the health of the bay is at stake. “I don’t see it as a tough spot,” said the GOP’s Taylor, who is from Virginia Beach. “If I agree with the president, then I agree with him. If I don’t, I don’t.” The GOP’s Harris, whose Maryland district encompasses much of the bay, said the proposal to eliminate funding does not reflect reality. “There’s nothing we need to do,” he said, when asked about how he will lobby his fellow lawmakers. “The Chesapeake Bay program has broad support in Congress, and Congress appropriates money.”

A make-or-break moment for ‘the most important fish in the sea’

One of the smallest fish in the Chesapeake Bay is also one of the most critical. Atlantic menhaden have been called “the most important fish in the sea” because of the vital ecological and economic roles they play in the bay and along the Atlantic Coast. Filter feeders, the silvery fish form massive schools that sweep through the water eating microscopic plants, animals and detritus. Young menhaden are sardine-size, but they can grow into foot-long fish that are bony, oily and considered quite unpalatable by human tastes. Other critters love them, however. Menhaden are a major food source for striped bass, bluefish, summer flounder, weakfish, dolphin, whales and iconic Chesapeake birds such as ospreys, loons and pelicans. Seventy percent of an adult rockfish’s diet typically has been menhaden. If you love angling for stripers or dining on rockfish fillets, you have to love menhaden, the little fish that makes it all possible. But all is not well. And in Virginia, one peculiar legislative oddity could stand in the way of badly needed action. For many years, menhaden numbers have been declining dramatically in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic Coast. Today, they’re at their lowest levels on record, or about 8 percent of unfished numbers. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages the coast-wide menhaden population, has concluded that menhaden have been experiencing overfishing for at least 32 of the past 54 years. Equally disturbing are scientific reports that osprey in the lower bay are suffering malnourishment linked to fewer menhaden; similar concerns have been raised about striped bass. Help for menhaden could be on the way. But two things need to happen first. First, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is considering steps to address the menhaden decline, must produce an aggressive action plan. Reducing annual harvests by 25 percent or more, for example, is an essential first step for allowing the population to recover. The commission will release a new conservation plan this month. Second, East Coast states must implement the plan — including Virginia. If Virginia fails to adopt meaningful catch restrictions, menhaden simply will not recover. That's because menhaden are the target of an intense, industrial-scale fishery operating in the Chesapeake Bay and off the mid-Atlantic coast by Omega Protein Corp. This “reduction fishery” uses spotter airplanes, mother ships, small boats and giant nets to catch vast quantities of menhaden and bring them ashore to Reedville, Va. There, they are processed into fish meal and oil for vitamin supplements, cosmetics and animal feed. Eighty percent of all menhaden caught on the East Coast come back to Reedville, making the tiny town one of the nation’s largest fish landing ports (by weight) and providing several hundred local jobs. Any conservation plan that doesn’t apply to Virginia and the Omega Protein plant will have little effect. But there’s a problem. In Virginia, fisheries decisions are made by the state’s Marine Resources Commission — except when they relate to one species. Yes, you guessed it: menhaden, which is instead managed by the 140 members of the General Assembly. This odd arrangement puts politicians, lobbyists and money, rather than scientists, in charge of menhaden. This, it goes without saying, does not bode well for making the tough choices needed now. To overcome this, it is vital that Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) take a leadership role in support of legislation that implements meaningful menhaden conservation. Powerful and successful precedents argue that he do so. Virginia took strong steps in the past to successfully rebuild the striped bass population and to spur the rebound of blue crabs in the bay. The recovery of these species, and of menhaden, will benefit everyone, including Omega Protein, watermen, anglers and wildlife. The fate of the “most important fish in the sea” may well depend upon it. ****

To save their depleted species, female blue crabs go the extra mile to spawn in the bay

Deep under the cold, dark waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the answer to whether the decimated blue crab population can survive lies buried in mud. Tens of millions of female crabs are scattered across the floor of the lower bay in southern Virginia, where the estuary pours into the Atlantic Ocean, waiting out winter for one of the most important events in their short lives. When spring comes, they will inch closer to the ocean with billions of eggs. It’s a critical time because the blue crab population is reeling, facing some of the lowest numbers in history. Officials are desperately hoping that steps taken to protect females last year will allow the fishery to rebound from the edge of disaster. But those efforts are also mired in a debate over the best way to protect the crabs. As females go, so go blue crabs. Last year, scientists estimated that there were only 68.5 million females old enough to spawn, far below the 215 million that officials say are needed to overcome natural threats such as predators and cold — and human threats such as commercial overfishing — without depleting the population. This year’s count is underway by Maryland and Virginia scientists at 1,500 locations. The blue crab, Maryland’s state crustacean and a symbol of pride for the region as much as a resource, is more threatened now than at any time since biologists started to record numbers in the late 1940s. Both watermen and state officials are deeply worried about blue crabs’ future. Sixty years ago, the Chesapeake Bay yielded 75 percent of the crabs harvested in the United States; now the withered stock yields about 35 percent, according to a report by the Maryland’s natural resources department. Some watermen say the steps taken by Virginia, Maryland and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission to rescue crabs after the population’s free fall in 2008 haven’t worked. The states cut the number of females that can be fished by about 30 percent. When the stock rose only to fall hard again last year, Virginia cut the number of females that could be fished by an additional 10 percent during the spawning run. Smithsonian scientists worry that efforts to save females might produce a serious side effect: overfishing males. When male crabs decline, those remaining mate more often, and sometimes can’t regenerate their sperm supply quickly enough, according to a study by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “I don’t believe it’s going to get better, doing what we’re doing,” said Bill Mullis, chair of the Virginia Blue Crab Industry Panel of commercial fishermen and owner of B&C Seafood, based in Newport News, Va. “We’ve been doing this eight years and the stock is the same as it was when it was declared a disaster. It’s like disaster has become the status quo.” Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner John Bull disagreed, saying regulations worked. The population rose over four years to a 21-year high of 765 million in 2012, then dropped like a stone the next two years. “We’re not happy with the status of the crab stock,” Bull said. “But fishery managers are stunned by the curveball Mother Nature has thrown at us.” Bull said female crabs and their offspring were hit by forces managers couldn’t control in the past two years. A plague of red drum fish that prey heavily on juvenile crabs decimated them in 2013. At the same time, grasses that conceal juveniles diminished. “Baby crabs didn’t have a place to hide, and they were dinner,” Bull said. The next year, things got worse. Managers worked successfully to reduce the red drum by fishing them out, but another problem came out of nowhere. A harsh and sudden winter wiped out nearly 30 percent of adult crabs, marine scientists in Maryland and Virginia said, ending any hope for a fast rebound. The total weight of crabs watermen harvested in 2014 was 37 million pounds, the lowest ever recorded. The low supply and high demand for crabs caused prices to spike, said John Rorapaugh, the sustainability director for ProFish, a wholesale seafood supplier in the District. A pound of lump crab meat ranges between $19 and $26 in the April-to-December season. But last year, it started at the high mark and stayed there, Rorapaugh said. For one restaurant, Canton Dockside in Baltimore, the price of crab meat jumped 40 percent, eatery managers said. The total number of males, females and juveniles was a mere 297 million last year. The last time it was that low — at 293 million in 2008 — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared the Chesapeake’s commercial crab fishery a failure. The estimates paled in comparison to the 852-million count in 1993. Adult male crabs are brawny, but the weight of maintaining the habitat falls on females. They do the heaviest lifting, by far, in a yearly trek to replenish the species. After they mate from May to early October, nature beckons them to the mouth of the bay. Depending on where they depart in the estuary, pregnant females known as sooks migrate as far as 150 miles to get to a spot in the lower bay near the salty Atlantic. Their offspring have a higher rate of survival in waters with elevated levels of salinity. Walking on six skinny legs and swimming with two tiny flippers, the perilous trip takes the entire fall. “They’re all moving down . . . waves of females” from as far north as Havre de Grace, Md., said Romuald Lipcius, a professor of marine science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who studies crabs. The epic migration puts the more storied march of emperor penguins in Antarctica to shame. In a bay choked by pollution, killer invasive species and hundreds of fishermen, every step could be their last. They dodge crab pots, predators such as striped bass and red drum, and polluted dead zones where water lacks oxygen. “It’s an amazing thing,” said Anson “Tuck” Hines, director of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “You can think of it like a migration of birds, except they’re not moving in a flock.” The bay is huge, so “they’re not shoulder to shoulder,” but scattered out, “moving as individuals.” Females burrow in mud and stay almost perfectly still in winter to conserve energy at a time when food — oysters, clams, mussels, snails, insects, worms and some fish — is scarce. After the thaw, they move closer to where the bay’s fresh water meets the salty Atlantic. Each female lays between 750,000 and 3 million eggs starting in late April, but an average of only one in each brood is likely to live. The hatchlings take the form of microscopic shrimp that fan out to the continental shelf in the Atlantic in the early stage of life. After a month, they grow to look like lobsters the size of pin heads and ride flood tides northward into the bay. At the end of summer, they become juveniles that finally take the typical shape of a blue crab as they walk up the bay in grasses on the floor. They journey north on fall flood tides — and at every stage they are a tiny crab feast, disappearing into the mouths of virtually everything that swims, including bigger crabs. Considering the importance of the event, Mullis said he doesn’t understand why officials allow females to be harvested shortly after the fishery opens in March. “I feel there are too many sponge crabs going to market,” Mullis said. Females carry up to 2 million eggs each in a foamy sack called a sponge. There should be a moratorium on collecting them, he said: “Somebody needs to stop carrying the pregnant mothers to market. They are keeping millions of eggs from hatching.” Bull said that in cutting the number that can be harvested by 10 percent, Virginia was trying “to not put a debilitating hardship on commercial crabbers” trying to make a living. “A rule of thumb,” he said, “has been that if you ask 10 watermen their opinion on one issue, you get 30 back.” Blue crabs are a tropical species called Callinectes sapidus, meaning beautiful and savory swimmer. Their origin dates back tens of thousands of years in the Caribbean, long before the Chesapeake Bay formed. The warmth- loving species stretches from Argentina and around Bermuda to Cape Cod. Even for male and female blue crabs known to eat each other, there can be touching moments during the May-to-October mating season. Hines has watched males do a little wobbly underwater dance to lure females out of hiding. During courtship, the female is molting, meaning her top shell softens as she grows a new and larger one, making her more vulnerable to predators. Males climb atop females and latch on like a backpack to protect them. This happens only once in a female’s life. They store sperm and can use it several times to fertilize eggs. Once mating is over, sometime before summer ends, the long southern trek of females in the Chesapeake Bay begins. Read more: What melting ice does to polar bears Is the NOAA doing enough to save the Hawaiian monk seal? This fish lived in peace for 70 million years. Then it met the Army Corps of Engineers

Harbor posts failing grades in water quality report card again

The Inner Harbor and tidal Patapsco River posted failing grades in a water quality report card for a third consecutive year in 2015, casting doubt on a goal to make the waterways safe for swimming and fishing by the end of the decade. “The harbor is alive, but it is not doing well,” said Adam Lindquist, manager of the Healthy Harbor Initiative for the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, which publishes the report card. “Any reasonable person would have questions about whether or not we’re going to be able to swim in the Baltimore harbor in 2020.” The primary concerns continue to be fecal bacteria from the city’s aged and leaking sewage system and pollutants that flow into the harbor when it rains. There were signs of slight improvement in some pollutants but not enough to change grades for the harbor and Jones Falls from an F. City leaders and business and environmental groups in 2010 set a goal of having a “swimmable, fishable harbor” within a decade. Now, more than halfway to 2020, with so much work left to be done to keep sewage and contaminated stormwater out of the harbor, the say the goal may be out of reach. “Obviously it’s not terribly surprising, but it certainly is disappointing,” said Terry Cummings, director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Baltimore Initiative. Still, environmentalists maintained optimism. For the first time since the report card initiative launched in 2013, one waterway did not receive a failing grade: The Gwynns Falls received a D. Measures of dissolved oxygen in the harbor also improved, contributing to a decrease in the large fish kills that occur when algae blooms die and create dead zones devoid of oxygen. Despite the pollution, Lindquist said, the harbor is teeming with life — National Aquarium volunteers counted 130 species of fish, crustaceans, birds and insects — and with activity, including fly-fishing in the Jones Falls and kayaking and paddle boarding in the harbor. “There’s a lot going on that people aren’t necessarily aware of,” he said. Throughout the year, volunteers gathered 569 water samples from 49 sites across the Jones and Gwynns falls, the middle and northwest branches of the Patapsco River and its main stem leading out to the Chesapeake Bay. Officials said the data provides a detailed picture of the health of the harbor watershed, but it’s not enough to reach any conclusions regarding whether conditions are improving. “A D range is still not acceptable,” said David Flores, the Baltimore harbor waterkeeper whose organization, Blue Water Baltimore, gathers the data each year. “It’s not where we need to be or want to be in terms of water quality.” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) has expressed support for the 2020 goal. A spokesman for the mayor did not respond to a request for comment. When the Waterfront Partnership unveiled its “healthy harbor” plan in 2011, officials called for policies including a statewide plastic bag fee and bottle deposit system, the creation of special water funds using money from penalties and fines, and the development of a municipal utility that could collect fees for stormwater management. “We believe we can do it, and for the first time think it’s practicable,” Michael Hankin, president of the partnership and chief executive of Fells Point investment firm Brown Advisory, told the Baltimore Sun at the time. But five years later, efforts to ban plastic bags at the state level have failed repeatedly. The city approved a controversial 5-cent bottle tax in 2012. Lawmakers in Baltimore County have voted to phase out the state-mandated stormwater runoff fees for property owners that opponents call the “rain tax.” In last year’s report card, the harbor advocates emphasized the importance of a nearly $500 million project to improve the flow of sewage into the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in any effort to clean up the harbor. The project would install hydraulics to eliminate a 10-mile backup of sewage caused by a misaligned 12-foot main. It is scheduled to be completed by 2020. Lindquist said addressing the problem is a priority. “Not only does it contribute to massive sewer overflows of millions and millions of gallons into the Jones Falls, but also to sewage backups in peoples’ homes,” he said. Advocates aren’t giving up on the 2020 goal. “We’re hopeful we can address these issues in time to make the 2020 deadline,” said Cummings, of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “It’s approaching quite rapidly, and work isn’t being done quite as quickly as we would like.” **— Baltimore Sun**

How weather can make or break a Chesapeake Bay blue crab season

The majestic Chesapeake Bay blue crab, with its delicious white meat, will soon be available fresh at a restaurant or fish monger near you. April 1 is the start of commercial crab season in Maryland and watermen will be placing their pots and crossing their fingers for a fat catch. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the world. It is fed by numerous rivers flowing down the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, and from the Atlantic Ocean that ebbs and flows through the tidewater area of Virginia. This unique mix of salt and fresh water is what gives blue crabs – _callinectes sapidus_ , translated from Latin means “beautiful savory swimmer” – their mouthwatering taste coveted by chefs and backyard crab-feasters alike.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The weather plays a large role in the crab harvest. Conditions in the bay need to be “just right” – like Goldilock’s porridge. If it’s too cold, too warm, too rainy, too dry, or too windy, the bay’s water chemistry and the health of the crab population will be negatively impacted. Heavy rains and the influx of too much freshwater can prevent crabs from migrating to their spawning grounds. Strong winds can disrupt the delicate two-tier water circulation, and as a result, the salinity of the bay by mixing fresh water near the surface with saltwater near the bottom. Excessive heat is no friend of the blue crab, either. The bay is rather shallow, with an average depth of only 21 feet. It is also the southern extent of eelgrass, where many crabs breed and juveniles find protection from predators. During extended periods of warmth, the bay can turn into bathwater and kill off the eelgrass, leaving crabs exposed. Storm water runoff dumps excess nutrients, sediment and pollution into the bay, which also causes a host of problems for the blue crab. Suspended sediment can decrease visibility and sunlight needed to sustain the crabs’ critical seagrass habitat. An over-abundance of nutrients can cause algae blooms that lead to hypoxia – or deadzones – where dissolved oxygen is absent, along with all life. Blue crabs face an uncertain future. Once abundant, the crustacean’s population has now declined to a historic low. There are so few of them left that it is possible the “Chesapeake Bay” crab cake listed on the menu is not as advertised – it may have come from somewhere else. A recent study found that out of 90 crab cakes tested at area restaurants, 38 percent contained the DNA of a different species.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Let’s all cross our fingers for “just right” weather and good water conditions this summer, so we can enjoy plenty of beautiful savory swimmers.

Chesapeake Bay female crabs at their most plentiful since at least 1990

There are more spawning-age female blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay than there have been in at least 28 years, a sign that efforts to help the species withstand natural population swings are working. However, an annual survey of the bay’s crab population found that there are fewer crabs overall in the bay than there were a year ago — about 455 million, down from 550 million. That is because tides and currents carried less larval crabs up the estuary. The number of adult male crabs also fell. “Despite the modest number of young crabs, the total population remains stable and the number of spawning-age females — a major scientific benchmark for the health of the species — rose,” said David Blazer, director of fishing and boating services for the state Department of Natural Resources. “This is testament to the state’s adaptive and effective management of the fishery.” Crab season began April 1 and continues through the fall. The survey results likely foreshadow a strong first half of the crab season for Maryland watermen — until midsummer, they will be catching many of last season’s abundant juveniles that have matured enough to be harvested. But into the fall, crabs that meet the harvest size minimum could become scarcer, state natural resources officials said. Chris Moore, senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, called the results “a mixed bag” that show signs of resilience in the crab population, but also cause for concern. “The low number of juveniles suggests we need to keep in place the suite of crab management regulations first agreed to in 2008 by Virginia and Maryland,” he said. “We also must maintain federal funding for critical crab management programs, such as underwater grasses restoration.” Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration acknowledged last month that it might be open to revising catch limits, such as a midsummer increase in the minimum crab harvest size. Wednesday’s release of the population survey results launches an annual process of reviewing the regulations and whether they can or should be changed. Blazer said any such changes “will only be considered after we receive input from all parties involved.” Bay advocates meanwhile are also pressing against President Trump’s budget proposal that calls for elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Program. That office coordinates cleanup efforts across the bay watershed’s six states and the District of Columbia. The regulations established in 2008 focused on boosting the population of spawning-age female crabs and, among other things, restricted Virginia crabbers from dredging up pregnant females during their winter hibernation. A target population of 215 million spawning females was established. The 2016 survey results mark the second time since then that the target has been exceeded, with an estimated 254 million spawning-age female crabs in the bay. That was a 31 percent increase over 2015, a jump similar to the one reported when the target was last achieved in 2010. Blue crab numbers are naturally prone to swings because of the species’ complex and short life cycle. After being spawned in Virginia bay waters, larval crabs spend the earliest stage of their life in the Atlantic. Wind and weather carry them up the bay to grow and spend the winter burrowed in mud. The following season, they emerge and resume growing, with an average life span of two years. The state Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science have conducted the annual crab population survey since 1990. It involves sampling numbers of hibernating crabs dredged from the mud. A group of scientists that sits on the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee will analyze the survey results and advise fishery managers in Maryland and Virginia who decide on harvest policy changes. For the first time in years, Maryland’s longtime crab fishery manager, Brenda Davis, will not be part of the process. Natural Resources Secretary Mark Belton fired her in February without explanation. Watermen said they had been frustrated with Davis for what they saw as inflexibility in loosening harvest rules. ** The Baltimore Sun  **

The Trump administration’s attack on the Chesapeake Bay

THE TRUMP administration’s mindless attempt to scrap federal funding to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is a stroll down memory-impaired lane. Heedless of recent history, the administration’s proposed budget would, at a swipe, reopen the door to the degradation of the United States’ largest estuary and reverse important recent progress in restoring the water, fish, oysters, crabs and tourism that make the bay so vibrant. It was just six years ago that a third of the bay, from Baltimore to the Potomac River, was beset by a sprawling springtime “dead zone” of oxygen- starved water — the result of marine-life-killing nutrients from fertilizer and other chemical runoff. In the quarter century or so before the Environmental Protection Agency launched a massive cleanup program in 2010, the oyster harvest had plummeted by 96 percent and the crab harvest by 60 percent. Starved for oxygen by runoff pollution, huge tracts of the Chesapeake’s 64,000-square-mile watershed were in a death spiral. When the EPA intervened with what amounted to a tough “pollution diet” for the bay, it represented the last, best hope to revive an American treasure. The 15-year cleanup effort imposed a mandate on the District and the bay’s six watershed states — Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York — to make sharp reductions in the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that starved the bay of oxygen and were killing off recreation and industry alike. Now, by zeroing out the EPA’s planned $73 million for the cleanup next year, the administration’s budget would mark a pollution binge even as the pollution diet’s manifest benefits were working to revive a body of water that was becoming a lifeless soup. Some industrial farms, home builders and municipalities have resisted the EPA cleanup, regarding it as bureaucratic overreach. They have said it amounts to an unfunded mandate saddling them with the costs of cattle fencing and other means of pollution mitigation. From beyond the watershed, opponents feared it would become a template for even more ambitious actions by the EPA, including an effort to clean up the Mississippi watershed that might be expensive for major industrial polluters. Those interests prevailed in the administration’s budget, which would hinder efforts to upgrade sewage treatment plants with new technology and develop tighter standards to control storm water in both urban and suburban neighborhoods. But make no mistake: If the EPA program dies, so will the bay, and a precious natural resource will be despoiled for future generations. A sign of hope is the vigor of the pushback already being mounted by the region’s congressional delegation, including a number of Republicans. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, himself a Republican, has not directly attacked the effort to gut the cleanup program, but his spokesman issued a forceful statement on his commitment to revive the bay. It will take a concerted political effort and public pressure to recover the funds eliminated in the administration’s proposed budget. It is critical that they succeed. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: Mr. Pruitt’s tepid commitment to clean up the Chesapeake Bay Eugene Robinson: Trump budgets for a dumber, dirtier America Christine Todd Whitman: I was EPA administrator. Advice for the next one: Don’t walk back environmental progress.

Advocates hope to sell Chesapeake ray fish as tasty delicacy

GREENVILLE, Del. (AP) — In mankind’s battle against pesky critters, the strategies have been brutal. We spray them. We swat them. We shoot them and we shock them, seeing outright elimination as its own gratifying end. In the case of the voracious Chesapeake ray, the approach is far more tasteful and potentially rewarding — the plan is to marinate them, sauté them, and then eat them into submission. As part of a concerted effort to reduce their over-population in the environmentally delicate Chesapeake Bay, this clam- and oyster-munching fish is being promoted in the region this spring as a versatile and tasty seafood delicacy, making its way into the prepared food case in at least one New Castle County supermarket. In a handful of Delaware restaurants, chefs are also experimenting with preparations for this winged creature, which is a relative of the shark and similar to the skate, a species that has already won ready acceptance among discerning foodies. In the case of the Chesapeake ray, however, it may be a bit of a tough sell at first. “It looks ‘interesting’ at the very least,” said Jimmy Thompson, chef at Janssen’s Market in Greenville, where the ray is occasionally featured among its prepared food selections. “It makes people say, ‘What’s that?’” Part of the challenge lies in its obscurity, part in its decidedly non-fishy character. The flesh of these flat-bottomed fish is quite unlike more-familiar sea creatures, and more closely resembles meat in taste and texture, chefs say. It’s dense, versatile and robust, they say. Most who try it decide the ray holds solid potential as a favored comestible, especially when paired with sauce that’s suitable for such a neutral-flavored product — a cheesy crab mornay, for example, or a caper-studded meunière, Thompson recommends. “It’s got a meaty texture to it,” said Mike Hutt, spokesman for the Virginia Marine Products Board in Newport News. “We tell people it’s like veal, flank steak, pork.” Virginia is taking the lead in marketing the ray as a munchable, hoping to tame its impact on the Chesapeake, where a shortage of its natural predator — the shark — has allowed it to flourish. The fish — which weigh up to 45 pounds — migrate to the bay in early June, then depart in September. In the meantime, they’re insatiable. “While they’re here, they have to eat,” Hutt said. “Whatever’s available, that’s what they feed on - clams, oysters, small crabs, small fish. . We’ve had problems with these for years and years and years.” “They’re completely wiping out the shellfish, and it’s hurting the ecosystem,” Thompson said. At one point, they even tried to battle the ray by building cages around the oyster bars. “None of that worked either,” Hutt said. And a prior effort to market the ray as a food several years back was less than successful. “It never took off or went anywhere,” he said. Over at Dawson’s Seafood in Wilmington, a popular purveyor among local restaurateurs, co-owner Jeanie Harper been trying to whet appetites by providing samples of the ray to commercial customers. “It takes an avant-garde chef to do it, because it’s very different from the skate,” she said. Today’s ecological sensibilities and preferences for “green” practices could work in the ray’s favor this time around, she believes. “I think people have more consciousness about sustainability now versus then,” she said. Ultimately, economics and taste may prove to be the product’s prime pluses, said Jobe Hoy, Dawson’s co-owner. “I hope you’ll be seeing it on a lot more menus in the next quarter,” he said. “It’s kind of a win-win for everybody.”

Large ‘dead zone’ signals more problems for Chesapeake Bay

It began forming in May, when heavy spring rains loaded the rivers and creeks with fertilizer washed from farms and suburban lawns. It grew rapidly over the summer, as a broth of chemicals, animal waste and microbes simmered in the warm, slow-moving waters of the Chesapeake Bay. By early August, the “dead zone” was back: more than a cubic mile of oxygen-depleted water in which nothing — fish, crab nor shrimp — can survive. The phenomenon has been recurring in the Chesapeake whenever hot summer weather and pollution combine to trigger algae blooms that suck life-giving oxygen from the water. But this year’s dead zone was bigger than most, making 2014 the eighth-worst year since record-keeping began in the 1980s, according to monitoring data compiled by Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. The grim news for the bay comes during a year when U.S. waterways have seen large dead zones and nuisance algae blooms, brought on in part by pollution from the land. In the Gulf of Mexico, this year’s swath of “hypoxic,” or oxygen-depleted, water covered 5,052 square miles, an area nearly the size of Connecticut. Toxic algae in Lake Erie last month forced nearly a half-million people in Toledo to temporarily stop drinking tap water. About the same time, scientists in Florida observed one of the biggest “red tide” algae blooms ever recorded, a 100-foot-deep column of poisonous microbes stretching nearly 90 miles off the state’s southwestern coastline. “We’ve been working on this for 30 years and we’re not seeing reductions,” said Nancy Rabalais, a marine ecologist who monitors water quality in the gulf near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Despite years of efforts to stem the flow of pollutants into the river basin, “some people haven’t gotten the message,” she said. Dead zones are areas in which the amount of oxygen in the water drops below 2 milligrams per liter, a level too low to support life for most marine species. Crabs and other creatures that cannot move quickly enough usually suffocate. While some dead zones are caused by natural phenomena — such as an upwelling of nutrients from deeper waters along the continental shelf — the ones in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico have been linked to pollution from farms, cities and suburbs in the watersheds farther upstream. The problem has persisted despite vast sums of money spent by state and federal officials to keep nitrogen and phosphorous from seeping into waterways. Nature has played a role as well, especially in the Chesapeake. This year, heavy rainfall in the spring and late summer washed fertilizers and livestock waste into the bay at higher-than-normal volumes, said Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science and president of the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science. Hurricane Arthur, which passed just east of Maryland in early July, scrambled the bay’s waters and almost wiped out this year’s dead zone before late-summer storms dumped a fresh load of pollutants into the Chesapeake, he said. If not for the rains, the bay might have seen a smaller dead zone this year, as recent curbs on agricultural and urban runoff have begun to take effect. “We still have high variability among years and even — as we see this year — within years, because of climatic variation,” Boesch said. “We still have a way to go and need reductions in nutrient sources.” In the gulf, a slightly smaller dead zone this year was hardly a cause for celebration. A task force of officials from a dozen states and five federal agencies has been working for 15 years to shrink the gulf’s dead zone to a more manageable size. This year’s 5,052 square miles was 2 1 / 2 times larger than the group’s projected target for this year, said Rabalais, the marine ecologist. Part of the problem, she said, is that the Mississippi basin is so awash in nitrogen from farms and cities that it will take years for the nutrients to flush out. River sediments are so saturated with fertilizers, animal waste and plant carbon that short-term reductions in new sources of pollution will barely make a dent in the problem, she said. “Even if we turned off the spigot today, it would take a couple of years to get to a reasonable level,” Rabalais said. Until that happens, fishing boats will have to continue traveling deeper into the gulf to find waters with enough oxygen to sustain fish and shrimp, she said. Rabalais worries that any gains achieved could be reversed as state governments push back on regulations intended to lower the volume of nutrients pouring into the gulf. Indeed, the only thing that is shrinking consistently is the money allocated for monitoring the health of the gulf. This year, Rabalais said, her team had enough money for only one expedition into the gulf to collect water samples. As for next year, “we’re just not sure,” she said.

No matter where they call home, Chesapeake bay crabs affect us all

Marylanders know that their state’s blue crabs have plenty to struggle with just to survive in the Chesapeake Bay. Then, when I read the July 30 Metro article “McAuliffe’s claim to blue crabs has Maryland seeing red,” I learned that the poor crustaceans also have to be concerned about which state to claim as their proper residency! I was born in Pennsylvania. As an infant, I traveled across the state line to live in Maryland, and I’m still an inhabitant of Maryland. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) asserted that the crabs are Virginians , but given my experience I believe the location of blue crabs when hatched as larvae isn’t relevant, but the crabs’ “place of residence” when they are harvested and designated Maryland blue crabs is. ****Robert L. Rudnick** , Potomac**

Seeding project near Key Bridge in Baltimore offers oysters ‘a second chance’

A heaping shoal of oysters might have peeked above the water two centuries ago near what is now the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Such a shoal could explain why the U.S. Army built the hexagonal Fort Carroll in the same area in the late 1840s to defend the busy harbor. But the shellfish have not thrived in the Patapsco River since. It’s difficult for them to reproduce there — the process requires saltier water, and the population hasn’t been able to withstand decades of industrial and urban pollution. Now, Chesapeake Bay advocates are testing a strategy to give oysters a second chance in the Patapsco. Shells carrying 3 million speck-size baby oysters clattered off the Chesapeake Bay Foundation boat Patricia Campbell this week — and onto a recently laid bed of stone between Fort Carroll and the Key Bridge. The hope is that the oysters, like others planted in nearby beds in recent years, will at least survive and grow, filtering sediment and pollutants from the river and creating food and a habitat for other creatures. Perhaps they could do even better. “One thing we want to find out is if they will reproduce,” said Terry Cummings, who ran the foundation’s Baltimore Initiative until his retirement last year. “The jury is still out on that one.” The oyster planting was the realization of a project that the bay foundation and the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore launched two years ago. The Great Baltimore Oyster Partnership pledged to seed the Patapsco with 5 million oysters by 2020. Those groups, along with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Living Classrooms Foundation, have deposited smaller numbers of oysters on natural beds around Fort Carroll for years. But the seeding completed Monday is a larger experiment that could be reproduced elsewhere in the region, if it is successful. The oysters were deposited on a man-made reef that extends the bivalves’ footprint in the river by about an acre. The project is separate from more substantial oyster restoration work in lower portions of the Chesapeake, largely on the Eastern Shore, designed to boost both the bay’s health and the state’s seafood industry. In this case, the investment is purely ecological. Oysters cannot be harvested from the Patapsco because pollution makes them dangerous to eat. Yet they serve as the bay’s natural cleaning system, pulling sediment and nitrogen from water as they filter out and eat plankton. They excrete nitrogen pollutants directly onto the bay bottom, where microbes convert them into gas that bubbles up and is harmlessly released into the air, said Allison Colden, the bay foundation’s Maryland fisheries scientist. That process helps clear bay waters so sunlight can reach underwater grasses, which, along with the oyster bars, serve as vital habitat for fish and crabs. With those sorts of benefits in mind, the Maryland Port Administration provided about $90,000 to lay crushed stone on top of the soft riverbed last year. It came from funds that the state agency dedicated to environmental projects to offset the impact of it placing material dredged from the harbor at a site in Masonville Cove, port spokesman Richard Scher said. The artificial reef serves as the hard substrate oysters need to thrive. The juvenile bivalves living there came from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s hatchery at its Horn Point Laboratory near Cambridge. The port administration and the Abell Foundation provided about $12,000 to grow the larvae and obtain a literal boatload of shucked oyster shells for them to grow on. Ecologists and volunteers gathered and cleaned the shells from a recycling program and a Virginia seafood company. After letting the larvae mature in tanks for about a week and a half, they mixed them with the bare shells, letting the microscopic creatures become what is known as spat-on-shell. About a month into their lives, the baby oysters tumbled to the bottom of the Patapsco. They join a smaller number of oysters that are “gardened” in cages around the harbor. Through the oyster partnership, about 150,000 oysters are transplanted to the natural reefs each year. That project is focused largely on public education and outreach, officials said. Biologists aren’t sure what will happen next. Oysters thrive in saltier brackish waters, but there they also encounter diseases that, combined with overfishing, have cut their numbers to an estimated 1 percent of historic levels in the bay. “Up here, you’re not going to see disease,” Colden said. “The trade-off is they’re going to grow more slowly.” An influx of fresh water running off from a storm could kill them off, and it’s unclear if the water will often be salty enough for them to reproduce, she said. Biologists and watermen alike are rooting for their success. Jim Mullin, executive director of the Maryland Oystermen Association, said a positive outcome could inspire more oyster restoration work north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The industry has been met with resistance to such projects because they are considered risky investments. But Mullin thinks it’s worth it. “It’s one more acre that’s got some seed on it,” he said. “If it’s in an area that traditionally hasn’t had oysters on it and there’s an opportunity for oysters to catch and grow there, that’s a good thing.” Bay foundation staff members, meanwhile, aren’t sure how many oysters already live around Fort Carroll or how they are faring, Cummings said. The small numbers of shellfish they dredge up for schoolchildren on field trips look healthy and growing, he said. The new oyster bed will serve as a good testing ground to learn more. The Patricia Campbell dropped the spat-on-shell at varying densities so biologists will be able to tell the conditions under which the bivalves grow best. Even if they can’t reproduce, they should boost the river ecosystem, said Adam Lindquist, director of the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative. Within earshot of the rumbling traffic of the Key Bridge, cormorants, egrets, herons and gulls have taken over Fort Carroll, abandoned since the 1920s. Marine sonar systems show clusters of menhaden or other bait for rockfish or other large predators lurking around the reef. The reef should provide fresh food and a habitat for fish and crabs, which in turn sustain the birds. “By planting in the Fort Carroll oyster sanctuary, we are giving oysters a second chance in the Patapsco River,” Lindquist said. ** — Baltimore Sun  **

Saving Maryland’s crabs

Angus Phillips wrote eloquently in describing the virtual collapse of the Chesapeake Bay crab population and in proposing solutions [“It’s now or never for blue crabs,” Sunday Opinion, July 27]. But there was irony in The Post’s choice to present it with a photograph that showed a tourist netting a mature female crab. A moratorium on the harvesting of any female crab by both commercial and recreational crabbers would have immediately improve the crab’s chances of recovery. ****John W. Neal Jr.** , Laurel**

Crab-picking 101: Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

Some of us grew up eating crabs at backyard feasts, whacking the bright red shells with wooden mallets and pinching younger brothers with discarded claws. But for many, going to a crab house for the first time can be confusing — and that’s before your friend explains why his crab-picking style is the most efficient. Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions. **When is the best time to eat crabs?** Now through mid-October. The crustaceans have spent the summer growing, molting and fattening up, which makes them more fun to eat than the skimpy little crabs that are common around Memorial Day. **When I sit down at a waterfront crab house, I’m eating Maryland crabs, right?** Maybe. Maybe not. The dirty secret of some area crab houses is that while the kitchen might be only miles from the Chesapeake Bay, the crabs have traveled much farther: Those blue crabs or swimming crabs were spawned in the Gulf Coast, Indonesia, Vietnam or Venezuela. The primary drivers for this are price and supply: Maryland’s crab population is climbing again, but the state produced 33.1 million pounds of crabs in 2015 — far from enough meat to feed all of the region’s hungry crab lovers. This pushes up prices for restaurants that are willing to pay more for a local product, and means that some restaurants can’t afford to carry Chesapeake Bay crabs if they want to turn a profit. This is compounded by the short crabbing season: In Maryland, it’s legal to catch crabs only from April 1 to Dec. 15. **How can I tell if I’m eating Maryland crabs?** The easiest way is to check the list of “True Blue” restaurants on _marylandseafood.org. _To participate in the True Blue program, which was launched in 2012 by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, a restaurant must promise that at least 75 percent of the crabmeat it uses each year will be “harvested and/or processed in the state of Maryland.” Every business that makes the pledge provides the DNR with invoices proving that its crabs were purchased from local wholesalers or watermen before it’s listed on the True Blue website. Karen Knotts, who manages True Blue for the DNR, stresses that the program — which has grown to more than 160 members in Maryland, the District, Virginia and Delaware — is “promotional, [and] not a certification program.” The state doesn’t use forensic tests to prove that the meat comes from Chesapeake blue crabs. Instead, restaurants are randomly audited a few times each year and asked to show proof they’re purchasing crabs from local watermen. If a restaurant isn’t in compliance, it can be removed from the program, but there are no further penalties. It’s worth noting that you can eat local crabs at a restaurant without True Blue status. Some popular crab houses serve Maryland crabs throughout the summer, but rely on Gulf or imported crab in spring, when catches are light, as well as throughout the winter, which pulls them below the 75 percent line. **What do the different sizes of crab (#1s, #2s, jumbo) on the menu mean?** They mean whatever a restaurant wants them to mean. There is no standard size guide, other than Maryland’s legal minimum, which is 5¼ inches. Some places will tell you that the largest and heaviest crabs are #1s, crabs that are a bit smaller are #2s and so on. Others use more conventional terms, such as “small, medium, large, jumbo.” But even those descriptions vary from crab house to crab house: At Jimmy Cantler’s famous crab house in Annapolis, for instance, a large crab is 6 to 6 1/2 inches, while across the bay at Ocean Odyssey in Cambridge, a large is between 5 1/2 and 6 inches. Size doesn’t always matter. I recently enjoyed some medium (about 5 1/2 inch) crabs in Annapolis that were packed with more sweet, delicious meat than the larges (6 to 6½ inches) I’d had the week before in Baltimore. **So how many crabs should I order?** A good rule of thumb is three to four crabs per person. Order fewer if you’re also ordering corn, hush puppies, oysters and other appetizers. And while size varies between restaurants, you can usually trust the crab houses to rank the crabs appropriately: four mediums is probably equal to two or three larges, which are equal to one jumbo or extra-large. It depends on how hard you want to work for that precious lump meat. Keep in mind that at good crab houses, crabs are steamed to order. If you get halfway through your order and realize you want more, you’ll be looking at an at least 30-minute wait before the rest of your meal arrives. When in doubt, order an extra crab. Someone will eat it. **Where’s the drawn butter?** You’ll automatically get little cups of apple cider vinegar or extra seasoning for dipping your crabmeat at most Maryland crab houses. If you want to look like a tourist, ask for drawn butter to go with your steamed crabs. (Or worse, tartar or cocktail sauce.) Save the butter for king crab legs or lobster. **What beer goes best with crabs?** Most crab houses around the Bay serve National Bohemian, even though the Pabst-owned lager hasn’t been brewed in Maryland for two decades. For a local pairing, try Anthem, a sweet, golden ale from Baltimore’s Union Craft Brewing, or Stillwater Classique, a lemony, peppery beer that is a “deconstructed” twist on Natty Boh. For a more flavorful experience, order Dead Rise, from Frederick’s Flying Dog. Brewed with Old Bay crab spice, the summer ale is crisp and salty, with notes of pepper, allspice, and celery and garlic salts.

The Trump administration’s dismal forecast for the Chesapeake Bay

As I write this, clean-water advocates look with worry to Washington, where the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has announced the process for repealing and replacing a rule meant to clarify which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act. For the sake of the Chesapeake Bay, the Clean Water Rule is one Obama-era action that President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt should think about keeping. The repeal effort comes on the heels of the president’s fiscal year 2018 federal budget, which proposed the elimination of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program. About two-thirds of this $73 million annual program is sent to states across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, including Maryland, to help reduce pollution in the bay and restore water quality in local streams and rivers far removed from the main-stem Chesapeake — such as those in New York and Pennsylvania. A House panel proposed $60 million in funding. When it comes to getting pollution out of our waters, the government faces two choices: incentive or regulation, the carrot or the stick. Most folks prefer the gentler route of incentive rather than the sometimes coarse application of the regulatory stick, particularly when very few are polluting waters intentionally. This is a real-world application of the old concept that you gather more flies with honey than with vinegar. Taken together, regulation and reward can be a recipe for the successful restoration of estuaries such as the Chesapeake. Unfortunately, the EPA’s action will take us two steps backward, marginalizing regulation and incentive — one as too burdensome and the other as too costly. Failure seems assured. Between the Clean Water Act and the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program, the federal government had two hands firmly on the wheel of Chesapeake restoration. The changes we’ve seen coming out of the Trump administration recently would seem to leave the bay restoration effort without a clear driver. In Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay is an iconic and proud part of our identity. But its story begins in small runs and creeks hundreds of miles away, in townships and boroughs that have no obvious connection to the bay. Asking people to care about something they don’t often see is a difficult proposition. Asking elected officials to spend scant tax revenue to clean up an estuary wholly outside their jurisdiction is a tall order. But we simply cannot have a clean Chesapeake or the working commercial waterfronts and massive recreation economy the bay supports without protecting those far-upstream headwaters. Of course, we protect those waters not only for the bay’s sake but also for their own sake; for those waters are in many cases the trout streams of Pennsylvania and provide the drinking water of New York. Now is not the time for the federal government to abandon the Chesapeake. In a watershed as large and diverse as the bay’s, covering 64,000 square miles and parts of six states and the District of Columbia, the federal government has an essential and appropriate role: to help ensure that there is one coordinated, watershed-wide restoration effort, not several disparate and unequal individual efforts. All of this is coming after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released study data that forecast a larger-than-normal bay “dead zone” — an area of such low oxygen levels that fish and other aquatic life cannot live. Monitoring the bay’s dead zone has become almost a summer ritual, as whole swaths of the Chesapeake become biological deserts unable to host the bay’s iconic blue crab and striped bass. This forecast should motivate everyone in the watershed to do more, not less, and that certainly includes the Environmental Protection Agency. **Read more about this issue:** The Post’s View: The Trump administration’s attack on the Chesapeake Bay The Post’s View: Mr. Pruitt’s tepid commitment to clean up the Chesapeake Bay Chip Bowling: Farmers can help clean up the Chesapeake Daniel Sze: The whole region wins when we improve the  Chesapeake  Bay

Maryland vs. Virginia: A War Between the States, crustacean edition

Maryland vs. Virginia. The War Between the States that never ends. The two regional rivals have squared off about lots of big issues: gun laws, abortion restrictions, same-sex marriage, casino gambling, transportation spending. Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Then there’s the cultural divide that rarely fails to inspire smack talk. Maryland’s got Natty Boh. Virginia touts its wine. The Free State knows how to do pit beef. The Old Dominion aces ham. BWI vs. IAD. Chicken antibiotics vs. Anatabloc. Molly Shattuck vs. Maureen McDonnell. (Okay. I don’t care what you say, it’s a draw when it comes to the more compelling former cheerleader/newly convicted felon scenario.) I-270 gridlock vs. I-66 horror. Like fighting family members, the states make ridiculous claims and switch allegiances. Virginia used to have a Republican governor, but now it’s run by a Democrat. Maryland usually prefers Democrats, but floored the country by picking a Republican. And it’s those very governors who launched the latest round of delicious, cross-Potomac squabbling. Last week, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) fired a shot at Maryland, saying that all those creepy crawlies dusted with Old Bay on butcher paper and sold as Maryland crabs should have a “Made in Virginia” stamp on them. Needless to say, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his people were not pleased. True, the female blue crabs commute for hundreds of miles — probably in horrible traffic with no cell reception — along the floor of the Chesapeake Bay to release their larvae in Virginia’s saltier bay waters. Yeah, yeah. Crustaceans party hard all over the DMV’s waterways, trawling the marinas of Annapolis and the bars of Baltimore, make whoopie, then head to Virginia for good schools, cul-de-sacs galore and endless league sports. We get the metaphor, McAuliffe. Once hatched, the babies — looking like cute little pinheads — head to the ocean. After a few months rocking out in the big sea, they return to their Virginia birthplace during their really awkward stage, when they look like little lobsters. But Mom’s gone. Dad’s nowhere to be seen, so about half of the crab millennials (the ones who can’t afford a waterfront condo in Virginia Beach) figure out that it’s boring to stay in your childhood home and they head to the sweeter, brackish waters of the Maryland Chesapeake. That’s where most get caught, steamed and served with mallets. Could you argue those are the dumb ones? Nevermind. Here’s the thing. While Virginia and Maryland are sparring over who should claim rights to the blue crab, the mighty estuary so vital to both states and the future of their crustaceans is being trashed. The bay itself is what’s in danger. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation held an annual meeting last week to look at 32 years of progress cleaning up the nation’s largest and most polluted estuary. This came at the same time that the Environmental Protection Agency released a report that slammed all six states that share an interest in the bay for not meeting the federally mandated clean-up plans. The only state that came close is Maryland. The worst offender? Pennsylvania. While y’all are launching a ridiculous custody battle over crustaceans, you’re missing the real bad guy in all this — the home-wrecker who’s basically peeing on your lawn and corrupting your children. The farms along the Susquehanna River fill the Chesapeake Bay with tons of pollution in many forms, from fertilizer runoff to actual sewage. Pennsylvanians consistently vote against regulation because who cares about a place they don’t get to see? No one’s eating crabs in farm country. “Pennsylvania recognizes the volume of work that needs to be done,” said John Quigley, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, last week in response to the EPA report. How about this: Maryland, you go ahead and claim the crabs. Virginia, own the oysters! Virginia has done a great job repopulating ravaged oyster beds (and there’s that whole “Virginia Is for Lovers” thing to live up to.) Then put aside all your amusing smack talk and team up for something serious: Going after the polluters in Pennsylvania and your own states that are ruining the most precious thing that you share, besides the Beltway — the Chesapeake Bay. **Read more Petula Dvorak:** Frigid offices, freezing women, oblivious men Genius Girl, a Harvard-Stanford admissions hoax and elite college mania Passengers watched killing on a Metro car. Should they have intervened Donald Trump meet Everett Alvarez, who was a POW even longer than John McCain

Trump budget would eliminate funding for Chesapeake Bay cleanup

President Trump’s proposed budget would eliminate federal funding for the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest program to restore a body of water in U.S. history, just as the effort reaches its halfway point. **** The Environmental Protection Agency awards millions in grants each year to the District, nonprofit agencies and six states in the bay watershed — Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware — to pay for restoration. The program’s budget has increased to $73 million from its low point at the end of the administration of President George W. Bush. Last year, Virginia and Maryland and its local governments received about $9 million each from the program. If enacted, Trump’s budget threatens to derail the cleanup efforts, accomplishing a goal opponents of the program could not. “We’ve been reliant on this money to make sure the bay is restored. Without it, there is no cleanup,” said Chante Coleman, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition. Eighteen million people live in the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed. It’s a source of recreation, including boating and fishing, and sustains a large commercial fishing and crabbing industry. In 2010, the watershed states and the District agreed to take specific cleanup steps by 2025, including upgrades to deteriorating sewer facilities and fences to limit chemical runoff from farms. Numerous studies have shown that water quality in the bay was improving. The biggest sources of pollution have been nutrients and sediment that flow from cities and farms. There was a time when oysters nearly vanished from the bay because of the pollution, and crabs and fish suffocated by the hundreds. Farmers, home builders and chemical companies unsuccessfully fought the plan in court, saying a cleanup should be governed by the states, not the EPA. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA administrator, was attorney general of Oklahoma at the time. Hejoined opponents who feared the government would use the bay program as a model to regulate the Mississippi River watershed. Although Pruitt recently said he supported multi-state solutions to improve the health of the bay, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) opposed his confirmation, in part because of his stance on the bay. Last month, 12 Democrats and five Republicans in the House wrote a letter to Trump urging him to maintain the bay cleanup budget.

Officials: Algae bloom suffocated thousands of fish to death in Anne Arundel creeks

State officials are investigating what killed thousands of fish in Marley and Furnace creeks in northern Anne Arundel County, but suspect they suffocated after an algae bloom sucked the oxygen out of the water, a Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman said Tuesday. Investigators saw an estimated 6,000 dead and apparently dying fish Monday, mostly in Marley Creek but some as well in adjoining Furnace Creek, said MDE spokesman Jay Apperson. There were at least nine different species of fish involved, including Atlantic menhaden, silversides, silvery minnows and sunfish, he said. The fish apparently suffocated, according to Apperson; investigators measured almost no dissolved oxygen in the water at the time. The low oxygen levels were likely a byproduct of the algae blooms seen since March along the upper western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and in tributaries, such as the Patapsco River and Marley Creek, Apperson said. The MDE spokesman said investigators identified Prorocentrum minimum in the water, a type of algae often associated with mahogany or red tides that discolor the water. Though not considered harmful to humans, they can deplete the water of oxygen as they die and decay. The bloom in Marley appeared to be dying back, Apperson said. About 30 dead fish were reported near City Dock in Annapolis, Apperson said. Investigators suspect those were blown there from the Severn River, he said, which has also been experiencing an algae bloom. Algae “bloom,” or grow like crazy, when the water is chock-full of the plant nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, which get into the bay from sewage discharges and leaks, from storm runoff and from air pollution falling out of the sky. The bay received a near-record infusion of nutrients late last summer when Tropical Storm Lee soaked the region. The lower Patapsco took another hit in late March when 50 million gallons of untreated sewage spilled from a Baltimore County pumping station. About that time, with warm weather favoring algae growth, scientists first noticed blooms there and elsewhere around the bay, and have been following their growth since. Bacteria levels from the sewage spill just recently dropped back to acceptable levels, so that health officials on Monday lifted their warning against swimming or water contact. Story: Md. state officials investigate what killed thousands of fish _**tim.wheeler@baltsun.com ** _

We can move forward with the Chesapeake Bay cleanup

Regarding William D. Ruckelshaus’s July 12 Local Opinions essay, “Why haven’t we cleaned up the bay?”: The Chesapeake Bay is one of the world’s most productive estuaries, environmentally and economically. But excessive pollution has impaired the resource. Mr. Ruckelshaus was correct that nonpoint source pollution — runoff from farms and forests, construction sites and city streets — has become the major challenge to cleaning up the bay. The region’s economic future is at stake. Thanks to states’ efforts and the Environmental Protection Agency, we’ve made significant progress since Mr. Ruckelshaus launched the bay cleanup in 1983. Applying further measures — more buffer zones, more trees, better land management — may prove disruptive to business as usual and will clearly entail costs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit recently approved the cleanup blueprint, which was challenged by homebuilders, farm bureaus and others. I trust this decision will get the bay cleanup back on track, help mandate needed pollution reductions among those responsible and spur cooperation among government, landowners, businesses, communities and others to meet the goal of a clean, healthy, productive Chesapeake Bay. Our leaders must ensure that this happens, for the benefit of those who depend on the bay for their livelihoods; for those who use it for recreation; for those inspired by its history; for future generations; and for the crabs, oysters and other wildlife. The country is watching to see if continuing actions to restore the bay match the rhetoric. ****William K. Reilly** , San Francisco** The writer was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1989 to 1993.

Larger ‘dead zones,’ oxygen-depleted water, likely because of climate change

Three years ago, the Chesapeake Bay was hit by an unusually large “dead zone,” a stretch of oxygen-depleted water that killed fish from the Baltimore Harbor to the mid-channel of the Potomac River and beyond, about a third of the bay. Another giant dead zone returned last summer, smaller than the first but big enough to rank as the estuary’s eighth largest since state natural resources officials in Virginia and Maryland started recording them in the 1990s. In a future of climate change, those behemoths might not seem so unusual, according to a new report by the Smithsonian. As the global temperatures warm, they will create conditions such as rain, wind and sea-level rise that will cause dead zones throughout the world to intensify and grow, the report says. Ninety-four percent of places where dead zones have been recorded are areas where average temperatures are expected to rise by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit by the turn of the century. In addition to the Chesapeake Bay region, that includes the Black and Baltic seas and the Gulf of Mexico, where a dead zone equal to the size of Connecticut took shape in August. “Over 40 percent of the world’s population lives in coastal areas,” said Keryn B. Gedan, codirector of a conservation program at the University of Maryland and a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Cambridge, Md. “We depend on these resources. No one wants to see a fish kill or harmful algal bloom at their local beach.” Gedan was a co-author of the study with Andrew H. Altieri of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. They found that the number of dead zone events have doubled each decade since the 1950s and that humans have likely contributed to their growth in intensity and size. “We just don’t know how much of this doubling is due to climate change or nutrient runoff,” Gedan said. More studies with more “sophisticated modeling” are needed to determine that, she said. Dead zones are summer plagues that happen when waters warm. As the water temperatures increase, three key events pave the way for a catastrophe that kills any fish, crab, oyster and shrimp that relies on oxygen. The metabolism of animals in the water revs up, turning them into hungry eaters that use more oxygen as they search and feed on algae. Algae that feeds on nutrient pollution that runs off farms in rains and pours out of overflowing sewers bloom and perish in a rapid and enormous death spiral. Microbes feed on the dead algae in a frenzy that sucks out oxygen to a point where it can no longer sustain life. In a warming world, this process, which currently starts around May, will likely start sooner unless steps are taken to reduce the overabundance of nitrogen, phosphorous and other pollutants that flow into water. Gedan said the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan is one example of how government can act to mitigate climate driven impacts that create dead zones. Previous research supports that assertion. A study of the bay’s water quality by researchers for Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that dead zones have been reduced since pollution limits were first implemented in the 1980s. They studied water-quality data for the Chesapeake from 1949 to 2009 and found “evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference,” the study’s lead author, Rebecca R. Murphy, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins, said when the study was released in 2011. There is no certainty that cleanup plans such as the bay’s so-called pollution diet, which calls for the governments in six states and the District to reduce sewer overflows and nutrient runoff from farms, can counteract changing climate and its accompanying ill effects. Downpours, wind storms and sea-level rise are a lot to overcome. Downpours cause sewers to overflow, wind storms wipe fertilizers off yards and push them down drains and sea-level rise threatens to drown wetlands that block pollution’s path to rivers that feed bays and oceans. Unlike crabs and bivalves such as oysters, striped bass, an iconic Maryland and Virginia fish, could swim to the shallows to escape deeper oxygen depleted water. But as the weather warms and raises the temperature in shallow water, that refuge could go away. High temperatures in shallows cause “thermally induced hypoxia,” the report said. “This combination is predicted to reduce habitat for striped bass. In extreme situations, the temperatures of shallow water may exceed thermal tolerance of organisms, leaving them with the dilemma of choosing death by hypoxia at depth or by thermal stress in the shallows.”

Farmers can help clean up the Chesapeake

I consider myself an environmentalist, a conservationist and a farmer. This is an identity I share with many farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which spans more than 64,000 square miles in six states and the District of Columbia and is home to almost 18 million people. I am proud to live near the Chesapeake Bay. My family and I hunt on the land and boat in one of its watershed rivers every weekend possible. We also catch fish, crab and oysters, so for us to keep enjoying the benefits of the river, we fully understand that, as farmers, we’re part of the solution to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. With recent criticism of the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s proposed changes to state nutrient management regulations, one thing remains constant on our farm: We closely follow a nutrient management plan that reflects our field by field soil profile, crop rotations and distance to surface waters because protecting my local river and the Chesapeake Bay is a top priority. My perspective on farming and protecting the environment is one other farmers share. In a recent survey, conducted by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance and the National Corn Growers Association, farmers across the country indicated that soil health (95 percent) and precise use of pesticides (94 percent) are key factors in environmental health. Unbeknownst to many, with advances in agricultural technology, we’re using pinpoint accuracy in fertilizer, nitrogen and chemical applications, continually improving each year. We also use cover crops, including wheat and rye, during winter so that our nutrients stay in the ground for the next growing season. To prevent nutrient runoff, we plant buffer strips on the perimeter of our fields. One way that farmers are doing more with less and preserving the environment is through the use of genetically engineered crops, which I find critical to our success for many reasons. The majority of farmers surveyed (87 percent) said genetically engineered crops allow them to minimize pesticide and herbicide usage, and more than three-quarters choose genetically engineered crops as a way to engage in practices such as conservation tillage, which promotes better soil health. Conservation tillage also reduces erosion and loss of nutrients and sediment from farm fields. On our farm, we are 100 percent no-till, a common sustainable practice farmers in my area use. This production practice entails growing our crops without disturbing the soil through tillage, conserving more moisture, reducing soil erosion and improving the health and productivity of soil by retaining nutrients and organic matter. However, no-till farming is difficult without herbicide-tolerant crops because of the need to control weeds, conventionally done through tillage. Before genetically engineered seeds, we had to plow our fields almost every year, which caused much more runoff into the waterways and also impacted our crops’ productivity. The science behind genetically engineered crops involves making a copy of a gene for a desired trait in one plant to use in another plant. This method can be used to enhance drought-resistant, chemical-resistant and bug-resistant crops. Before biotechnology, selective breeding (dating almost to the beginning of time) was used. This technique would entail planting the crops with better taste, yield and disease resistance. But instead of going through generations and generations of plants, you can speed up the process with crops engineered at the molecular level. Scientific developments are celebrated in almost every other industry, yet some consumers are apprehensive when they are used to improve our food supply, even when the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization back genetically engineered food as safe. Over the past few years, genetically engineered crops have been passionately debated from many sides. But as a farmer, I can tell you that when it comes to putting the environment first, genetically engineered crops promote sustainability because they allow us to be better stewards of the water, soil, air and habitat on our land. Real sustainability starts on each farm, and America’s farmers are your neighbors. We’re in your markets and feeding you the same food we feed our kids. The writer is a third-generation farmer and vice chairman of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. **Read more about this issue:** The Post’s View: Scientists refute the scaremongering about GMOs Michael Gerson: Corporate irresponsibility over GMOs The Post’s View: Chipotle’s GMO gimmick is hard to swallow

Will a great year for Chesapeake Bay crabs mean a great year for watermen?

OFF HOOPERS ISLAND, Md. — At 4:41 a.m., Bubby Powley looked at his watch, looked at the thin, pink glow to the east, and looked at the dark water sliding past his boat. According to Maryland state law, he was allowed to start catching crabs exactly one hour before sunrise, and that was right . . . about . . . “Now. Dontcha think, Monroe?” Powley said, hitting a lever on a boom that lifted his first batch of the day from the Chesapeake Bay. The sprightly 66-year-old swung the basket inboard, where his culler of 42 years, Monroe Dorsey, 68, a slim cigar clenched under his white mustache, dumped a few dozen wriggling crustaceans into a fiberglass basin. It was a pretty good haul in what so far has been a very good crab harvest. Dorsey measured male after male with a plastic caliper and tossed those of five inches or more into one of the six and a half bushels Powley would sell later that day to a wholesaler. The summer is getting off to a promising start along America’s biggest estuary — the center of a beleaguered, multibillion-dollar commercial fishery. Scientists are predicting a robust blue crab season, with an annual survey showing big numbers of crustaceans beginning their annual south-to-north march across the bay’s floor. Fishermen report a marked improvement in water quality. And with every haul of his basket, Powley has to clear his rig of huge clumps of eelgrass, a vital marker of the ecosystem’s health that had been missing for years. “It’s a little too soon to go overboard and declare victory,” said Bill Goldsborough of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, “but it’s a positive sign.” But out on the water an hour before dawn, it’s hard for the Chesapeake’s weathered and wary watermen to exult. After decades of declining catches, reams of new regulations and endless market fluctuations, those who still pull their living from the bay know that every silver lining has its cloud. “We’ll know whether it’s a good year in November [when the season ends],” said Powley, who has been fishing off Hoopers Island in Dorchester County for more than 40 years, just as his father, grandfather and great-grandfather did. He has seen a season start out with the traps and trotlines brimming with crabs only to peter out in the doldrums of midsummer, as it did in 2012. Location can be key, as migrating crabs congregate in some nooks of the bay and leave others empty of commercial quantities. The best years, watermen say, are when the Chesapeake has a big harvest and other parts of the country don’t. “Everybody’s got crabs this year, from New York right on down to Georgia,” said John Buchanan, a lifelong fisherman who crabs on the Tred Avon River near Oxford, Md. Already, they can feel the pinch that bites harder than any crab claw: When the catch goes up, the price goes down. Full-timers are finding it easy to fill bushel after bushel. And part-timers, drawn by reports of easy pickings, are trailering in boats and leaving the wholesale docks groaning with crabs. At the beginning of June, Powley was making $100 for each bushel of No. 1 males. Within three days, the price fell to $80. A week after that, $70. “Any waterman will tell you it’s not what you catch, it’s what you make,” said Buchanan, who estimates that 90 percent of the boats he sees are part-time license-holders working weekends and vacations. The boat tied up two slips from his belongs to a Talbot County deputy sheriff. “They come in for the gravy and still have a job to fall back on,” he said. “The full-timer waterman, though — that’s getting less and less.” The lean years have taken a toll on Chesapeake fishermen, according to Tom Horton, an environmental studies instructor at Salisbury University and a frequent chronicler of the bay’s signature waterman culture. He estimates that their numbers have fallen from 10,000 or more in the 1990s to fewer than 3,000 who are active today. Overfishing of crabs, oysters and rockfish squeezed out many. And while the massive multi-state effort to restore those fisheries is showing signs of success, its restrictions — on the hours they can fish and the amounts they can land — have chased plenty of watermen to other jobs. “The people I know who still make a full-time living off the water are the ones who thank God every day they have a wife who is a nurse at the hospital,” Horton said. Powley, whose own wife worked in the Dorchester County Clerk’s Office for years, said he’s grateful for the long career he has had on the back of the Maybe Baby, his 42-foot Chesapeake work boat. For four decades, he ran crab pots, the high-capacity wire cages that could produce 150 bushels a morning in the days before restrictions. Now semi-retired, he and Dorsey meet at the dock every morning at 3:30 and crab for nine hours — the maximum allowed by law — with three 2,500-foot trotlines, a piece of bait tied every six feet. “It gets in your blood,” he said, a dark silhouette in a white bib as the sky grew rosy behind him. “I still love watching the sun come up every morning.” He tweaked the vertical tiller at the side of his boat as he steered along his middle trotline. In the water, the thin cord rose from the five-foot bottom. The crabs zipped by as pale blurs, clinging fatally to their hunk of chicken or cow lip until they were knocked into the basket. At the end of the line, Powley hoisted the basket, dumped it and steered for the buoy that marked the next run. Dorsey sorted the catch into Jimmies (males), sooks (females) and peelers (the molting “soft-shell” crabs they sell for 75 cents apiece). Those too small went back over the side. The big ones can deliver a nip even through his neoprene gloves. “When you been at it as long as I have, you don’t pay it no mind,” he said, shaking another tenacious Jimmy from his finger. On July 15, when the size limit shifts by a quarter-inch, Dorsey will pull out the 5.25-inch caliper. In October, the workday will expand by an hour. It takes 26 clauses to detail the hours and dates governing legal crabbing through the season. “It’s all so regulated, half the time the [Department of Natural Resources officers] don’t know the rules — they have to call Annapolis,” Powley said. There is a grudging acquiescence to the tight controls that watermen face in the modern age. They complain but comply, assuming that no one understands the bay more than those who spend their lives on it. Some occasionally credit “management” with making things better. “The water is as clear as I’ve seen it,” said Nick Crook, a 29-year-old waterman who lives on Kent Island, Md. “I think the pollution controls are having a positive effect.” But generally, commercial fishermen attribute the ebb and flow of the animal populations they chase to natural cycles. They tend to dismiss the predictive power of the winter crab survey conducted by the state. Powley argues that the sea grass is back because of the power dredging for oysters they allow near Hoopers Island. When Dorsey finished his sorting, he would light another cigar and step across the boat to work on the next day’s bait. Each case of beef lips has to be packed in salt to brine overnight. Every afternoon, he and Powley spend three more hours stripping the lines of old bait and tying on another 1,300 or so fresh chunks. A case of cow lips is $135, giving him two days of bait per line. Fourteen gallons of diesel runs about $35. In all, it cost Powley about $300 to pull away from the dock that morning, not counting insurance, his crab license and the $18,000 he recently spent to resurface the bottom of the Maybe Baby. After tying up, Powley sold his six bushels of big males, three bushels of culls (skinnier males destined for the picking house) **** and two dozen peelers for a take of about $650. “It’s a lot of work, and it seems like not as many people are willing to do it full-time,” Powley said as he picked sodden clumps of grass from his net. That sea grass used to float in patches “by the acre” when Powley started out crabbing with his father. He’s glad to see it back, even though it means more work cleaning his gear. The grass provides a critical nursing habitat for baby crabs, and its return is a sign of a recovering bay and, hopefully, a more stable fishery. Two new crab-processing plants have opened this season on the Eastern Shore, according to Bill Sieling of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association. And although watermen are making less per bushel of crabs, they are increasingly able to round out their year with other catches, including oysters in the fall and rockfish (striped bass), once banned from being fished in the bay. As Powley crabbed on the Honga River, his brother was texting him photos of the menhaden he was catching in the Patuxent River. Crook, the waterman who lives on Kent Island, is making such good money from a growing market in soft-shell clams that he has yet to bring out his crab pots. Each day, he dispatches up to 15 bushels of clams to a wholesaler in a refrigerated truck. They are in Boston by 6 a.m. and fetch $80 to $100 a bushel. “It’s all a balancing act. You’ve got to see what you can make the most money at,” said Crook, whose father has already switched to crabbing. Still, however encouraging the future of fishing might be, Powley knows that crabs and clams are unreliable creatures. His own son did not become the family’s fifth generation of watermen. Instead, he is president of a German-based filter manufacturer in Cambridge, Md. “Looks like I’ll be the last one,” Powley said. “I sent him to college.” **Read more:** Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning? A warning left on a nanny’s car. License plates stolen. And a top Pentagon official in big trouble. A Marine fights to prove he’s innocent of sexual misconduct. Then a lost cellphone is found. A Baltimore teen comes of age in a city coming apart

‘Oy, bay!’

When I think of the depletion of mollusks in the Chesapeake Bay, my reaction is: “Oy, bay!” So The Post’s Sept. 27 Metro article on Maryland’s “claim to the world’s largest man-made oyster reef,” an effort to resuscitate the species, was encouraging [“Scientists see new oyster reef as a pearl that could save bay”]. But it contained what might be an error of diction: that the species was “overfished to near oblivion.” Oysters are harvested, not fished, by means of dredging, gathering, raking and tonging, and fanciers of the species are better off as a result. ****Nathan I. Silver** , Bethesda**

‘Like something out of a horror movie’: Flesh-eating bacteria infection kills man in four days

About 80,000 people get some form of vibriosis every year, usually from eating raw or undercooked shellfish, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For most, the worst symptoms are diarrhea and vomiting. Michael Funk was one of the unlucky ones.   The infection moved rapidly. Days later, ulcerated and full of lesions, it was “like something out of a horror movie,” his wife, Marcia, told the newspaper. The flesh-eating bacteria was in his bloodstream.  Doctors diagnosed vibriosis quickly, and Funk was flown to a shock trauma hospital in Baltimore,  where doctors amputated his leg. But it was too late. He died Sept. 15, four days after cleaning out the crab pots. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is investigating the matter, the newspaper reported, but hasn’t issued an advisory. In 2014, officials issued a warning during a state-record outbreak in the Chesapeake Bay.  A recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that “rising ocean temperatures related to global warming “is strongly associated with spread of vibrios, an important group of marine prokaryotes, and emergence of human diseases caused by these pathogens.” To determine the bacteria’s growth, researchers used collections of plankton to determine how prevalent the microorganisms were.  “So in sum, it’s more evidence supporting [coral reef scientist Jeremy] Jackson’s point: We don’t just damage the oceans with impunity. Rather, from harm to fisheries to direct human health threats, that damage hurts us, too.”

A record catch for an unwelcome fish

An angler has hooked a record blue catfish in the Potomac River, but for wildlife specialists, this is not particularly good news — not because the big fish was caught, but because it was there. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported last week that an Oregon man named Ed Jones caught a Maryland record blue catfish Aug. 13 in the river near Fort Washington. The fish weighed 84 pounds and measured 52 inches long, with a 36.5-inch girth. But the blue catfish is an outsider in the waters of the Washington region, and for all its imposing size, not an especially welcome one. “While fisheries scientists and managers recognize the enthusiasm and economic impact of anglers in search of record catfish,” said Tom O’Connell, the director of the DNR’s fisheries service, “we don’t want to encourage the development and spread of this species.” They are top predators, and as such “they are a serious threat to our native species,” said O’Connell. The DNR said blue catfish are natives of t he Mississippi Valley, but were introduced to Virginia’s James and Rappahannock Rivers in the 1970s. They have reproduced and spread throughout the tidal Potomac River system, the DNR said. The fish are long-lived, fast-growing and opportunistic feeders, the DNR said in a statement. “Their introduction can cause irreversible changes in the food web,” DNR said. This in turn could have a harmful effect on native fish species which are ecologically and economically important, DNR said. So far, DNR said, catfish have been found in such Chesapeake tributaries as the Nanticoke and Susquehanna rivers, as well as upper parts of the bay. Jones, who landed the record catfish and his guide, Josh Fitchett, of Montpelier, Va., kept it alive and took it to the Fort Washington Marina for weighing and certification. Then it was tagged and returned alive to the Potomac near where it was caught. The tag and release was part of a study of invasive species being carried out by Maryland and Virginia fisheries biologists. In general, while releasing fish after catching them is often encouraged, DNR officials discourage the practice when it comes to blue catfish. According to the DNR, the old record for a blue catfish caught in Maryland waters was an 80-pound-12-ounce specimen, caught by a Pennsylvania man in February near where the new record was set. **More from The Washington Post:** Angler may have broken world record with snakehead caught in Occoquan River

Promote the good — not the bad — about the Potomac River

The May 15 Metro article “Potomac tops list of imperiled U.S. rivers” unfortunately depicted our nation’s (and maybe the world’s) finest urban wilderness river as the country’s worst waterway ecologically. The advocacy group American Rivers cited all the river’s problems in the apparent hope that the revelations will help in the effort to preserve the Clean Water Act. Certainly this is laudable. But perhaps emphasizing all the good that the act has done for the Potomac and other rivers would send a better message to Congress as it debates the act’s future. Simply put, the Clean Water Act is working, and the Potomac is much cleaner than it was before the act was passed 40 years ago. There has been a resurgence of plant and animal life along its banks. This year, walkers along Billy Goat Trail have had the pleasure of viewing a nesting pair of bald eagles. Last autumn, I saw three otters splashing in the river not far from Cabin John. Lush grasses are sprouting up alongside Stubblefield Falls, a favorite hunting spot for the river’s healthy population of northern water snakes. Resident rockfish abound near Fletcher’s Cove, and this spring “a great number of largemouth bass were caught right out in front of the boathouse,” according to Dan Ward, who has been working at the cove for 30 years and writes an online fishing report. He also said he has “never before” seen such a variety of birds near the boathouse. The message to Congress should be that its decades-long effort to clean the Potomac and other waterways has been worthwhile, although there is still much to do. ****Sean Kelly,** Bethesda**

Pilot program seeks more accurate count of Chesapeake Bay crabs

On the serene Potomac River, Rocky Rice’s crab-pot markers stretched for miles, an orange-dotted rope floating on water that sparkled like jewels under a bright summer sun. There was a crab in every pot. “Probably six to eight,” Rice said. Over two decades, watermen such as Rice have relied on a whimsical method of counting what they catch, relying on paper and pencil to log the size, sex and texture of trapped crabs, sometimes scratching out figures from memory before mailing them to the state. It has resulted in an inaccurate count at a time when Maryland is working to fully restore the Chesapeake Bay’s most iconic species. But on his recent outing, Rice broke with tradition, putting away paper and pen. Instead he carried a digital ThinkPad with software that allowed him to count his catch in the middle of the river, then send it directly to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) using a wireless signal as his boat made its five-mile run to shore in Morgantown. Rice is one of 50 Maryland watermen participating in a pilot program that could one day provide the most precise count of the Chesapeake Bay commercial blue-crab harvest the state has ever had. Maryland’s watermen would be among the nation’s first to count their catch using smart technology — tablets and cellphones. As part of the pilot program, they can log their catch in three ways: software that sends it directly into a DNR database, text messages sent to a designated number and telephone calls to a call center. It’s an attempt to solve a vexing problem with a few key strokes, said Steve Early, fisheries service division manager for DNR. Maintaining the bay’s crab stock is complicated, and knowing where adult crabs are harvested, especially females, is crucial to protecting them. Females in the southernmost part of Maryland’s portion of the watershed are jealously guarded because they are crucial to maintaining the crab stock in Maryland and Virginia. “With 5,200 watermen, the amount of paper coming from the current way of counting is a daunting challenge for the state. They’re a little bit behind the eight ball in knowing what’s coming out of the water,” said George Chmael, a facilitator for the Maryland Blue Crab Industry Design Team that recommended the technology. “The state wants to make sure it doesn’t overshoot the catch,” Chmael said. “If you have to make a mistake, you want to make the mistake of leaving more crabs in the water.” Millions of crabs that watermen can catch are probably left in the bay because of cautious limits, Chmael said. This year, the annual dredge survey in Virginia and Maryland showed that the juvenile crab population has rebounded significantly, from 207 million in 2011 to 587 million this year, after Virginia outlawed the winter harvest of most pregnant females. State officials and watermen want the number to keep going up. State officials have required watermen to record their catch under the current system since 1994, Early said. Before that, they conducted random surveys asking watermen to share information about their catch. With electronics, the state could better manage the fishery, possibly grow the crab stock, and breathe new life into its dying fishing industry by raising catch limits, goals that have eluded it for decades. Maryland sank more than a half-million dollars of a $15 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant into the program, Early said. And the bet appears to be paying off. “I definitely like the technology,” Rice said on his 25-foot boat, the Punisher, the sun already roasting his skin at 10 a.m. as a country music radio station blared a Randy Travis song. Watermen who embrace the technology say they know what is at stake. In 2007, when the bay’s blue-crab population hit a low of 250 million, Rice feared for his livelihood. “Crabbing is 85 percent of my income. Me, at 35 years old, I hope to be doing this another 30 years,” he said. Rice sells to a retailer in Mechanicsville every other day, getting $90 per bushel of large males, or No. 1 crabs. He fishes six mornings a week and can harvest five bushels of No. 1s in a single trip. He was among the first to volunteer for the pilot program, taking a two-hour course in mid-July. But not every watermen has bought in. Some are slow to welcome change, and a few who embraced the technology have reported glitches. Near Smith Island in Ewell, some lost a wireless connection, a problem the state fixed by getting Verizon to boost the signal. Others said confirming that they sent a report by text message was too hard. Some callers said the call center put them on hold. Working out the kinks is what the pilot program is for, Chmael said. And watermen who shun technology might be persuaded by a culture shift. Chmael recalled an older watermen telling him that if watermen can learn to walk into a Wawa food store and order a sandwich with a touch screen, they can do this. The design team will assess the results of the program when it ends in November, Chmael said. Technology could be phased in after next year’s season. Officials are confident about selling watermen on the technology, because they helped choose it. Under the old system, “there was way too much false reporting,” said Billy Rice, Rocky’s dad. “People said they were crabbing when they weren’t to keep their licenses.” With the help of the Environmental Defense Fund, seafood industry executives and watermen identified practices that led to inaccurate counts. Billy Rice traveled with a delegation to British Columbia two years ago to monitor the Canadian province’s use of electronics. “They’re light-years ahead of us,” Billy Rice said. Out on the Potomac, his son Rocky was catching up. He logged on to a program on a ThinkPad issued to him after his training. He got in after it buffered twice, searching for a signal. He pressed a button that said “End Trip.” He entered the license number of his boat and its crew count — one, his cousin Jimmy who helped that day. How many pots? 225, Rice answered. How many hours were you out? Four, he said. He logged five bushels of big No. 1 crabs, two bushels of smaller No. 2 crabs, a half bushel of females, a half bushel with mixed genders and finally 15 peelers, crabs that were shedding and growing. Rice hit send and was done. He powered his engine and sped by the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge toward his house on the water’s edge in his new paperless world.

‘Ghosts’ haunt creatures on bay’s bottom

GLOUCESTER POINT, Va. — Under the murky waters of the York River, an eerie blur appeared suddenly on Edward Hogge’s sonar, near where his 40-foot deadrise boat sailed about a mile offshore on a cool December morning. Hogge made a hard right turn. “I’m going back to get it,” he said. He called out to his wife and first mate, Cheryl. “All right, honey, get your gloves on. Get ready!” When the boat stopped, she tossed a long rope lined with hooks overboard and yanked it. “It’s got something! It’s heavy,” Cheryl Hogge said. Be warned: This is a ghost story. A hidden killer haunts marine life in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries: tens of thousands of baited crab traps left behind by watermen each year. These “ghost pots” capture legions of crabs, eels, terrapins, fish, muskrats and even an occasional duck, leaving them to die. For three years starting in 2008, more than 22,000 blue crabs, male and female, were found dead in ghost pots collected by watermen such as the Hogges under a federal and state program that pays for their work. Another 2,600 oyster toadfish, 950 sea snails known as whelks and 430 black sea bass were killed. “It’s like a feeding machine,” said state Department of Natural Resources Secretary Doug Domenech, who recently sailed with the Hogges to see firsthand how the program partly overseen by his agency works. “Animals get stuck and can’t get out. So they . . . become bait for the next animal that comes.” Watermen in Virginia are licensed to set about 300,000 crab pots each year. About 20 percent — 60,000 — are lost, according to a Virginia Institute of Marine Science estimate. The certain toll of dead animals represents those found in about 28,000 recovered pots, said Kirk J. Havens, director of the Coastal Watersheds Program for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. A short-lived program in Maryland removed 6,000 ghost pots, he said. The Chesapeake’s iconic blue crabs have enough problems without catching a death sentence in a ghost pot. Their dangerously low population is just beginning to come back after Virginia closed the December-to-March winter fishery as part of an effort to protect them. Each ghost pot traps about 50 crabs per year, according to an estimate by the institute. The killing continues all year, even when the waters are closed to crab harvesting. The program to remove the pots has been a success, Havens said. But it will end a four-year run when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stops funding it after this year’s haul in March. On this bright morning, though, Edward and Cheryl   Hogge are still at work. They reach over the side of their boat and haul up a deformed peeler crab trap heavy with mud, grass and too many sea grapes to count. Inside, flat on its back, white belly gleaming in the sun, is a tiny dead blue crab. The trap once was sturdy chicken wire coated by vinyl, but now it is a dilapidated animal trap, jailing creatures until they perish. New pots come with a buoy that floats to the surface and marks a trap’s place in the water. But boats often snag the ropes, and storms may roll the trap, wrapping the tether around it and pulling the buoy under during the March-to-November open crab fishery. “Some of them you can’t get,” Edward Hogge said. “They’re so old, they’ve been in the water so long, they fall apart.” Earlier in the day, the Hogges pulled up traps with three dead or dying eels, a weakened oyster toadfish and a dead croaker. “Last year, we caught a lot of them,” Cheryl Hogge said of ghost pots. “I think we caught, like, 348 or something, right up at the top of the most caught.” Virginia is trying to create a more animal-friendly pot. It would have a portal made of a plant-based polymer that dissolves if left in water for a year or more, allowing animals to escape forgotten pots. The loss of the Chesapeake Bay’s most recognized seafood is detrimental to more than just the crab. Restaurants, retailers and customers pay more for crabs, and watermen, who rely on the creatures for income, suffer too. In 2007, the federal government allocated $15 million to Maryland and Virginia “to assist those economically hurt by the commercial fishery failure, and to support the restoration of the fishery.” In other words, taxpayers would help watermen put food on the table and scientists to resurrect the crab. Virginia used its money to develop a Blue Crab Fishery Resource Disaster Relief Plan. When then-Gov. Tim Kaine (D) insisted that watermen work for the assistance, the Virginia Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science came up with the ghost pot removal program. Edward Hogge said recruiting watermen for the work was a good idea. “Those guys at VIMS are very smart, but they don’t know the water like we do.” Hogge was chosen for the job after state officials entered his winter dredging license in a lottery. He was issued a new, $2,500 side-scan imaging sonar for his 51-year-old boat and paid $300 per day and fuel costs for up to 50 days. He and his wife spend six hours on the water, usually starting at 7 a.m., when temperatures often are below 30 degrees on the water. Like most watermen, Hogge would rather be crabbing, and he wants the state to open the winter fishery. “It took our work, and there’s nothing for us to do,” he said. “Now they want to take this program away. I have no education. I quit school in the fifth grade. I was married by the time I was 17. I’ve got to do something.” As he steered the boat back, Hogge had an admission about the winter dredge harvest, which involves raking up crabs that have buried themselves in the bay bottom to shelter from the cold. “That dredge is heavy when it comes down. When I drag it, I catch about three bushels of crabs. But I also kill three bushels. If it doesn’t get all the crab, it gets part of it.” Earlier, as he loaded a ghost pot onto his boat, Hogge had another admission. Most watermen are honest workers, he said, but “this was thrown overboard deliberately. A lot of them don’t care. That’s just the way some people are.”

Morgan State professor picked for vacant House seat in Montgomery

Montgomery County Democrats on Thursday night nominated Morgan State University professor Pamela Queen to fill the 14th District seat in the House of Delegates, ending an intramural scuffle over how best to diversify the county’s legislative delegation. Queen would replace former Del. Craig J. Zucker (D-Montgomery), who was selected by the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee last month to fill the opening created by the retirement of state Sen. Karen S. Montgomery (D). Queen’s nomination goes to Gov. Larry Hogan, who is required by law to act on it within 15 days. Although Hogan is a Republican, it is exceedingly rare for a governor to reject the recommendation of a county committee in such matters. Queen, 56, is African American and a member of the Central Committee. She prevailed over two other candidates for the opening in the 14th, which runs north from Silver Spring along Montgomery’s eastern border with Prince George’s County and includes some of Montgomery’s most economically distressed communities. Queen’s candidacy was supported by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). **— Bill Turque** The National Park Service says $5.3 million in preservation funding is heading to 17 Civil War battlefields, primarily in Virginia. The Park Service says the federal dollars from the Land and Water Conservation Fund will help preserve 1,640 acres at battle sites in Virginia and six other states. The primary source of the funding is fees paid by oil and gas companies drilling in offshore waters. Among the Virginia battlefields receiving the preservation funding will be Appomattox Court House, Fredericksburg, Brandy Station, Gaines Mill and Sailor’s Creek. **— Associated Press** If you’re in search of some locally sourced fish, be selective about what you choose to consume from the Potomac River. American eel, carp and striped bass — also known as rockfish — caught in these waters have tested positive for elevated levels of toxic chemicals, according to an advisory this week from the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment. The fish contain elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, a man-made chemical long banned in the United States that has been linked to cancer and other adverse health effects. “Our goal is to protect the health and well-being of our residents,” Tommy Wells, head of the department, said in a statement. “This advisory helps ensure that residents who enjoy fish from District waters are aware of the health risks associated with consuming certain fish species.” **— Perry Stein**

Delaware, Maryland, Virginia water is pretty clean, but some beaches can make you sick

Headed for the beach this summer? The Natural Resources Defense Council suggests you check out the condition of the water you might be swimming in. “The water at your local beach might be contaminated by human or animal waste, putting your health at risk: bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens in that waste can make exposed swimmers sick,” the NRDC says in the introduction to its annual Testing the Waters survey. For this year’s report, the environmental group’s scientists tested samples from 3,458 beaches along the U.S. shores of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. The bad news is that 10 percent of the samples had levels of pathogens exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety standard, known as the Beach Action Value, or BAV. The agency places most blame on storm-water runoff, which can also trigger sewage overflows. The good news — at least for Washington-area vacationers — is that in general, the region’s beaches do pretty well on this survey, with the coasts of Delaware coming in first, Maryland fourth and Virginia sixth on the NRDC’s list of cleanest water. These states include six of the NRDC’s 35 “superstar beaches” — those that not only had no samples exceeding BAV limits in 2013, but none in the four preceding years (when national standards were lower). They are: in Delaware, Dewey Beach, Swedes; in Maryland, Point Lookout State Park and Assateague State Park; and in Virginia, Back Bay Beach and Virginia Beach at 28th and 45th streets. The report also points to some of the nation’s worst beaches. Lake Erie, shallow and surrounded by industry, has long had a reputation for polluted water, so it may not be surprising that seven of the report’s 17 “repeat offenders” — beaches where more than 25 percent of samples exceed pollution standards for each of the last five years — are in Ohio. But that list also includes a stretch of sand famous in California beach lore: the beach at Malibu, 50 yards east of the famous pier.

Beer Madness 2015: Which brew will be named the nation’s best?

Two years ago, The Washington Post’s annual Beer Madness competition became an all-local affair. We were riding a wave of regional beer pride: For the first time in more than 50 years, Washington was home to three full-scale production breweries, not just brewpubs. Virginia’s Lost Rhino and Port City were making waves. Maryland’s Flying Dog and Heavy Seas were among the Free State breweries winning national awards. On both sides of the Potomac, smaller operations, such as Evolution and Blue Mountain, were attracting fans. It was only right that we celebrate, and we continued the “locals only” entry policy last year. _[Vote for your favorites in this year’s Beer Madness.]_ But as we look at 2015, craft beer is bigger than ever, all across the country. Budweiser may mock drinkers of “pumpkin peach ale,” but it’s steadily losing market share to craft beer consumers. If the country’s largest lager producer can’t win craft fans back, it’s buying up the breweries that they love: Soon after Budweiser parent company AB InBev’s January purchase of Seattle’s Elysian Brewing, the Tampa Bay Tribune reported that Tampa’s much- loved and fiercely independent Cigar City Brewing had been approached about a possible sale. Closer to home, the ever-expanding market means our own DC Brau is regularly available in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and breweries from many states away are fighting for a beachhead in our area. Georgia’s SweetWater Brewing finally launched in Maryland last month after rolling out in Virginia and the District in 2014. An even bigger development finds some of the West Coast’s most popular and iconic brands building breweries close to Washington, to improve freshness and cut down on shipping time. Stone anticipates opening in Richmond as early as late 2015; Green Flash is expected to begin brewing in Virginia Beach in 2016. A bit farther away, Sierra Nevada is weeks from opening a brewery and taproom near Asheville, N.C., and New Belgium hopes to be up and running in the same area by the end of the year. They join Colorado’s Oskar Blues, which opened a North Carolina facility in December 2012. Given all that, it seems provincial to continue to limit Beer Madness as a Mid-Atlantic competition. We know our region’s brews can go up against the nation’s best: 17 D.C., Maryland and Virginia breweries have picked up medals at the Great American Beer Festival in the past two years. It only makes sense to see whether local beers can hold their own in a non-local Beer Madness, too. The 2015 edition of Beer Madness features 32 beers from across America, arranged in a traditional bracket for four style categories: Crisp, Hops, Malt, and Fruit and Spice. The field is stacked with familiar names, including Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Great Lakes and Terrapin. We tried to blend the old and the new: There’s space for Stone’s Go-To IPA, which debuted in spring 2014. Making a return is Maui Coconut Porter, which upset the bracket to win the 2012 Beer Madness title but was unable to defend its crown in 2013 due to our residency restrictions. To keep a local flavor, we reserved space for the four beers that won those categories last year, and we introduced a few wild cards, including DC Brau’s On the Wings of Armageddon, the only D.C. beer with a 99/100 rating on the popular RateBeer.com Web site. But the bracket is stacked with roadblocks for our local contenders: Can Bluejacket hold its own against Dogfish Head and Lagunitas? Will Devils Backbone’s Vienna Lager once again take the title? As always, the Beer Madness competition was a blind tasting held over two nights, and the panel of tasters was a pro-am mix. Our four experts include Washington Post beer columnist Greg Kitsock, local beer writer Tammy Tuck and Miles Gray III, the owner of Smith Public Trust and director of the annual DC Beer Week. Also joining us were four readers who were among the hundreds who applied to be on the panel. Columbia Heights beer bar Meridian Pint again served as the host venue, where beer director Jace Gonnerman was invaluable in helping select the participating beers. To qualify, a beer had to be widely available in at least two D.C. area jurisdictions, which meant no room for Heady Topper or Pliny the Younger, as terrific and laudable as those brews are. The only exception is Bluejacket’s Forbidden Planet, the reigning champion of the 2014 Crisp bracket, which can be sampled or purchased only at the Navy Yard brewery. It’s not just the panelists who get to weigh in: An interactive bracket at washingtonpost.com/beermadness will allow all readers to vote for their favorite beer in each matchup, beginning with the first round on March 11. Voting will be open for a few days each round, so you’ll need to check back frequently. We’ll reveal our judging panel’s blind choices at the same time, so everyone can compare those results. If you’d like to try these beers yourself, we’re organizing a championship happy hour at Meridian Pint on March 26, the same day we’ll announce the two finalists on the Beer Madness Web site. From 6 to 9 p.m., the public can try free samples of the two beers and vote for a favorite. Other Beer Madness competitors will also be available on tap that day for research purposes. However, we’re still several rounds away from crowning a champion. It’s time for the Madness to begin. **More fromFood:** Beer Madness 2015: Unveiling the bracket Meet the Beer Madness panelists A glossary of beer terms

Researchers think industrious oysters could clean up Chesapeake

Behold the tiny oyster. No, not on the half-shell, with a squirt of lemon, but in its watery habitat, the Choptank River. Out there on a reef with many other oysters, the bivalve is awesome, a janitor that helps remove pollution with incredible efficiency. A reef seeded with oysters by the state of Maryland — about 130 oysters per square meter — removed 20 times more nitrogen pollution from stuff such as home lawn and farm fertilizer in one year than a nearby site that had not been seeded, according to a recently released study. The upshot, said Lisa Kellogg, a researcher for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who led the four-year study, is that oyster reefs could potentially remove nearly half of nitrogen pollution from that one river on Maryland’s Eastern Shore “if you took all the areas suitable for restoration and restored them.” A wider restoration could help clean the Chesapeake Bay, where the Choptank and other major rivers drain. It is a huge deal, Kellogg said. Man-made nitrogen pollution is part of a one-two punch that creates oxygen-depleted dead zones that have bedeviled the bay. At one time, when oyster reefs were so mountainous and plentiful that European explorers complained about navigating around them, the Chesapeake was crystal clear. Oyster reefs are more than just the rocks of ages. They are the ultimate mixed-use development, inhabited by more than 24,500 marine animals that are not oysters — mussels, clams and sea squirts, to name a few — that also filter nitrogen. Excessive harvesting of oysters, combined with massive farm and urban pollution, depleted the bivalves, denuded reefs and clouded the water by the 1980s. About that time, two diseases, Dermo and MSX, came out of nowhere to decimate the stock of oysters in Maryland and Virginia. Oysters in those two states are experiencing a modest recovery because of the restoration and farming known as aquaculture. In Virginia, 236,200 bushels of oysters were harvested two years ago, up from 79,600 bushels in 2005. Maryland took in 121,000 bushels in 2011, nearly 95,000 more than 2005. Kellogg and her fellow researchers wanted to show that oyster reefs could greatly improve water quality and are worth the millions of dollars being invested in their restoration. They also hoped to build on previous studies that had depended on simulations to estimate nitrogen removal at oyster reefs. Their study, started in 2009, used actual measurements of nitrogen levels. “There was a huge amount of interest in nitrogen removal,” said Jeff Cornwell, a researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who contributed to the study. The researchers measured the amount of nitrogen gas production in water channels on a reef near the Emerson C. Harrington Bridge on the Choptank at Cambridge. They did the same at a site where restoration had not occurred. The study was funded by NRG Energy. “The rates we’ve seen in the Choptank for removal is the highest we’ve seen anywhere,” Cornwell said. “The . . . results are so promising. As we develop data sets we can calculate what oysters did when they were a larger population.” Bivalves scarf up phytoplankton that consume nitrogen. Phytoplankton produce algae blooms that die, turn into a sticky black goo and suck oxygen — needed by pretty much every inhabitant of bay tributaries — from the water. Dead zones deplete the bay of life and rob predators such as eagles and osprey of food. When oysters and other creatures eat phytoplankton, they poop it into dark areas of the reef where microorganisms feed. Those organisms convert the nitrogen to nitrogen gas that wafts into the atmosphere, Kellogg said. “The good news about oysters is if we do it right and give them a chance . . . they produce huge numbers of eggs each year,” she said. “It’s a prolific species that can provide this habitat again, to the extent that we allow it.” That message hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. This month, Virginia plans to embark on its largest state-funded oyster replenishment in history, focusing on sites in the James, York, and Rappahannock rivers and in the Chesapeake in Pocomoke and Tangier sounds, according to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. The state has already created huge sanctuaries in public waters where watermen are restricted to harvesting oysters on a rotating basis about every two years. In March, the Virginia Marine Police hit 10 people with 115 charges related to oyster violations. Maryland has been even more aggressive about restoring oyster habitat, pouring $50 million into oyster recovery over the past 16 years. Oyster harvesting is forbidden by the state on a quarter of the bars where they grow; violations can draw fines of up to $25,000 and as many as 15 years in prison. For years, Maryland scientists at the Horn Point Oyster Hatchery in Cambridge have put oysters in the mood to mate, bathing them in warm water tanks. When the vibe is right, the males spew sperm, the females spread eggs and, soon, larvae develop. The larvae live on a steady diet of algae until they develop into spat — like teenagers ready to move on to shells of their own. Millions are taken by boat onto the Choptank and Harris Creek and dropped onto reefs. Cornwell and Kellogg hope their work will encourage states to fulfill a mission to create 98 acres of reef a year — even though the diseases that kill the bivalves continue to be a threat. “You have to leave them out, have them develop a resistance and have a self-sustaining population,” he said. “There has to be a jump-start to have the oysters come back in a more natural way.” Cornwell paused for a few seconds, thinking about the risk. “If they’re all dead soon, you have to evaluate the value,” he said.

Md. stream restoration aims to bring back ‘brookies’ to help Chesapeake Bay

In a meandering stream where cows once muddied the water, finicky brook trout may one day find a home. That’s the hope, at least, as a construction crew works to refashion a badly eroded stretch of Little Tuscarora Creek on the outskirts of Frederick, Maryland’s second-   largest city. The $199,000 state-funded project is part of an ambitious effort to restore “brookies,” as the colorful little fish are known, to the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay’s rivers and streams. Able to survive only in clear, cold water, brook trout are an aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine. Once abundant, they have dwindled in number over the centuries as sheltering forests have been replaced by less hospitable farms, roads and homes. The fish have disappeared from nearly two-thirds of the streams in the state where they once were found, and in those streams with survivors, they cling to just 10 percent of their historic range — in remote mountain streams of Western Maryland and a few other oases, such as the upper reaches of the Gunpowder River in Baltimore County and Tuscarora Creek in Frederick County. “If there’s brook trout in there, you know it’s not an impaired stream,” said Gary Berti of Trout Unlimited, an anglers group dedicated to conserving freshwater fish and their habitats. Brook trout have long been the passion of anglers, who relish trying to catch the wily fish. Conservation groups such as Trout Unlimited have labored for decades to protect and restore their habitat. In recent years, they’ve gotten a boost from the multistate campaign to restore the bay, which has put more emphasis on cleaning up the Chesapeake’s rivers all the way to their headwaters. The brook trout has become a newfound focus of that effort, joining oysters, crabs and bay grasses. Last year, Maryland, the other bay watershed states and the federal government signed a new Chesapeake restoration agreement that included a pledge to increase brook trout habitat 8 percent by 2025. That amounts to an expansion by more than 200,000 acres of stream watershed across all six states that drain into the bay. “We’re talking about the source waters of the Chesapeake Bay,” said Berti, the West Virginian who directs Trout Unlimited’s work on Eastern rivers. The group won the grant for the creek project from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. To bring brook trout back to streams such as the Little Tuscarora, a tributary of the Monocacy River, the water has to be cleaned up and returned to more pristine conditions, Berti explained. If that can be done, he added, then “you pass that good water downstream,” where it can help heal the ailing estuary. It’s a daunting challenge, given the sensitivity that brook trout have to the disturbance of the land along their streams by farming, logging, mining and especially development. Studies have found that the majority of surviving populations are in streams where less than 1.5 percent of the watershed is covered by buildings and pavement. Added to those land-based insults is climate change, which threatens to shrink their range more by warming waters beyond the tolerance of the fish. For all the development that has occurred in Frederick County, some streams there still support wild brook trout. Little Tuscarora Creek is one of them, even though it flows along the northern edge of the city, where homes are pushing up amid cornfields. “That particular stream is pretty amazing,’’ said Shannon Moore, a county planner. It’s spring-fed with cold groundwater, she noted, which is probably the only reason the temperature-sensitive fish are hanging on. The county has its own initiative to enhance and restore its trout streams, she said, and is working to incorporate more protections from development into its long-range growth plan. And not a moment too soon, as dump trucks and construction equipment were at work clearing ground and piling dirt just upstream. The nearest brookie is miles upstream from the stretch of Little Tuscarora Creek being restored now. But those involved with the project say a farmer offered to let them rehabilitate the portion of the stream on his land, and they couldn’t pass it up. “Anytime we can do work to enhance habitat for brook trout, it gives us justification to do work in the area,” said Ben Hutzell, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has provided technical help and oversight for this and other stream-restoration projects around the region. On the Little Tuscarora, bank erosion was so bad, Hutzell said, that more than 200 tons of sediment — 22 dump truck loads — were being washed downstream annually. Now, earth movers and construction equipment are reshaping 1,500 feet of stream channel, putting in more curves to slow down the flow and reducing the height of its banks. Workers with Ecotone Inc., a Jarrettsville stream-restoration contractor, are embedding the new bends with tree roots and trunks, as well as some boulders, to cut down on erosion and give fish someplace to hide. As open as the stream is there, Hutzell said, it’ll still be too warm for brook trout in summer. But when the streamscaping work is done, contractors and volunteers will return to plant more than 600 trees, nearly 500 shrubs and another 3,000 “livestake” cuttings of willows and other vegetation, which over time should restore the long-lost forested canopy for the stream. “We hope in future years this can be an area for at least seasonal brook trout habitat once more work is done upstream,” Hutzell said. “But at least we’re going to reduce quite a bit of bank erosion and sediment loss downstream,” he added, which helps the bay. Hutzell said brook trout are unlikely to relocate permanently to this stretch of stream unless intervening areas can get similar treatment. That will require enlisting the cooperation of neighboring landowners — at least one of whom has already declined entreaties. Hutzell and Berti say they hope this project, when finished, will help soften such reluctance. Mark Staley, a state fisheries biologist, fished Little Tuscarora Creek with his brother when they were kids. His father still raises corn on the 30-acre farm the family has worked since the 1890s. “When I grew up here, I distinctly remember my grandfather [saying], ‘Never let the government on this land, ever,’ ” Staley said. The family once raised beef, but their beef cattle wore down the banks and fouled the water — as did the herds of nearby dairy farms, he noted. They sold the herd years ago, and the pasture has gone unused since. But the erosion has only worsened as the suburbs have encroached. Having at least a small stretch of the creek restored is “really satisfying,” Staley said. “On one hand, I really miss the way the landscape around there looked when I was younger,” he said. But “we are doing something there now that hopefully will be better.” ** — Baltimore Sun  **

Blue catfish: Overabundant, and the key to a new nonprofit group’s mission

The name “blue catfish” doesn’t carry the same villainous ring as that of its invasive counterpart, the snakehead, but the whiskered fish are proving even uglier for the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Having vacuumed their way through local flora and fauna — even some precious Maryland blue crabs — they now outnumber other fish 3-1 in bay tributaries. A new nonprofit group is putting this source of protein to work for a noble cause, turning its plentiful numbers — and mildly sweet, malleable flavor — into affordable food for Washington’s hunger-relief organizations and the broader market. “Conceptually, it’s simple. There’s too much fish, so let’s turn this problem into an amazing solution for two different issues,” said Wendy Stuart, co-founder of the Wide Net Project and the consulting practice Food Works Group, which has been working on the project for about a year. Stuart’s background as an economist and Culinary Institute of America-trained chef complements that of Wide Net’s other founder, Sharon Feuer Gruber, who until recently worked as an adviser to the District’s largest food pantry, Bread for the City. They have a shared penchant for improving local food systems and, while they’re at it, the region’s natural and social ecosystems. “What we realized is we can address both of these issues more successfully together,” said Feuer Gruber. After deciding the blue catfish was a problem bigger than the attention it was receiving, the two had to figure out whether they could address it, and how. ****Introduced into three Virginia rivers in the 1970s as a game fish, the catfish have acclimated quite well, growing to more than 100 pounds during their 20-year lifespan. They now make up an estimated 75 percent of total fish in local rivers. The Maryland Department of Fisheries says catching and consuming them is the best way to reduce the fish’s population. Native bay species including blue crabs, menhaden and herring have become easy prey for this rapacious eater, but very few species eat blue catfish. The fish is so abundant in local rivers that scientists have caught more than 6,000 of them in one hour during population surveys, according to the Blue Ocean Institute. The research organization recently gave the Chesapeake-sourced fish its highest sustainability rating, meaning that eating more of it is actually good for the bay. Meanwhile, restaurants, universities and other large institutional buyers are increasingly looking for local, sustainable fish options. And if those options are offered at the same price as, say, farmed tilapia from China, “it sort of becomes a one-plus-one-equals-three scenario,” said Stuart. For Wide Net, the key to selling buyers on that equation was finding the right partner. Instead of investing in the infrastructure to catch, process and distribute the fish, Stuart and Feuer Gruber decided to work with J.J. McDonnell, the Jessup seafood supplier that will be the project’s exclusive distributor. The company had already been marketing the fish and sold 190,000 pounds of it last year Connor Boney, marketing manager for J.J. McDonnell, quickly embraced the concept, which has the potential to increase demand for a fish that is easy to catch, needs to be harvested in greater quantities and can be sold cheaply to those most in need. “From our perspective, it’s fantastic. Why wouldn’t we want to be involved?” he said. The company will distribute only blue catfish that weigh eight pounds or less, to avoid toxicity problems sometimes found in older, larger fish. J.J. McDonnell is, in many ways, making the project’s current model possible, offering a special price on catfish sales to Wide Net for new customers the project brings in. That allows Wide Net to charge the usual market price to institutional buyers such as hospitals and keep a portion of the revenues to subsidize the cost of catfish for hunger-relief organizations. The distributor will also ask its existing customers whether they want to participate in the project, meaning those sales would be funneled through Wide Net, which could keep a portion of the proceeds. Although Wide Net operates in some ways like a for-profit business, it also accepts donations to fund the educational and marketing components that are key to spurring demand for the fish. Feuer Gruber has seen firsthand that seafood is the second-most-requested protein, right behind chicken, at places such as Bread for the City. Faced with a lack of food, some of the city’s poorest residents fish in local waterways, despite dangerous toxicity levels in the Anacostia and other rivers. “We needed to look creatively at food sourcing from the hunger-relief perspective,” she said. “From a bay perspective, since the only guidance about managing the population is to eat more of it, a program has to exist to make more of that happen.” Even as it launched last month, the project already has garnered support — and a few customers. Allison Lilly, sustainability and wellness coordinator for the University of Maryland’s Department of Dining Services, said the project is a “serendipitous” match for her efforts. The university was already increasing its sustainable food offerings but had started quite literally with the low-hanging fruit (along with vegetables). Seafood, she said, sounded too complicated to tackle right away. But when Wide Net approached her, she found that local catfish could fit into her program. She saw an opportunity to replace other white fish that was sometimes delivered with no indication of a country of origin, let alone a guarantee of sustainability. The program’s executive chef, John Gray, was a harder sell. Like many people aware of the muddy flavor of bottom-feeding catfish, he was convinced he didn’t like it. But this blue catfish, he noted, was different. Because these apex predators are not relegated to the bottom of the tributaries they run in, they take on a cleaner, more versatile taste. “It’s challenging to go to a chef and say, ‘No, this is not the catfish you’ve tasted for the last 20 years. You need to try it,’ ” said Stuart, who offers recipes she has created to show the fish’s versatility. She says the blue catfish can be used like any other flaky white fish: seared or fried; in fish cakes, tacos or nuggets. “I’ve cooked it a couple dozen different ways, and it’s good every time.” Lilly said university students responded well to both the taste and message of the catfish project when it was introduced at a recent event. She’s considering adding the fish to the school’s salad bar or value menus. Wide Net also will be providing catfish to Union Hospital in Cecil County, Md., which has won awards for sustainable food service. “A project like theirs is great,” said Steve Vilnit, director of fisheries marketing for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. “Anywhere we can get the product out there. The more consumption and awareness, the better.” About 400,000 pounds of blue catfish were commercially harvested from the bay watershed in 2012, with no obvious impact on restoring biodiversity, according to the Maryland Department of Fisheries. In its first year, the Wide Net Project aims to move an additional 100,000 pounds of the fish out of the bay and into Washington area markets. “A big piece of this is we want to scale up so that, as big as the demand gets, we can service it,” said Stuart. And, she added, if the project can help the fishing industry move the needle on catfish consumption, “maybe we’ll make a dent this time.” **Recipe:** Caramelized Fish Pot **More fromFood:** Weeknight Vegetarian The Immigrant’s Table Smoke Signals Spirits Column Beer Column

Husband-and-wife scientists take on black muck clogging Chesapeake Bay

Welcome to the creeks of Chesapeake Bay. Decades of work by organizations such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and by government agencies have dramatically reduced the amount of pollution entering the bay through its tributaries. But the Chesapeake is still clogged with millions of tons of slimy black muck — full of harmful ammonia and phosphates — that foils attempts to restore water quality and diversity of life. A husband-and-wife science team is trying to find a way to destroy the muck, and their hoped-for solution lies at the bottom of a septic tank. Diana Muller, director of scientific monitoring at the South River Federation in Edgewater, Md., and Andrew Muller, a professor of oceanography at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, are exploring whether a sort of dietary supplement for septic systems can digest black muck from the creeks that feed the Chesapeake. They are using a formula similar to that of Rid-X, a blend of bacteria and enzymes that digests the sludge that builds up in septic systems over time. The bacteria include two types of microbes, nitrosomonas and nitrobacter. Nitrosomonas oxidizes otherwise harmful ammonia (plentiful in the Chesapeake’s black muck) into nitrites; then the nitrobacter converts those nitrites into nitrates, which aquatic grasses and other plants can use for growth. “Two hundred years of clear-cutting,” Andrew Muller said, explaining the origins of the black muck. “When you clear-cut all those trees and there’s nothing holding that soil, now you have huge storms that come through over time. That sediment gets mobilized and literally cuts deep inside streams as that material moves through. . . . These creeks have got anywhere between five to 12 feet thick of this muck. This is not normal for these environments.” The black muck fuels algae blooms that result in a largely dead ecosystem. Instead of a clean, sandy bottom with aquatic grasses, invertebrates, fish and oysters, an infected creek becomes a wasteland of mud, stench, ammonia and a few species of anaerobic bacteria. The bay’s smaller, tidal tributaries have been overlooked in bay cleanup efforts, Diana Muller said. “It’s always been about the James River, the Rappahannock, the major tributaries, but these smaller ones have been completely ignored and not researched at all,” she said. “If we were to take a sample, [the black muck] would look like just this black, gelatinous, mayonnaisey, high-in-hydrogen-sulfide ooze. . . . The idea is that the good bacteria, nitrobacter and nitrosomonas, eat and literally digest all the organic matter in your septic system. So if we treat this like a septic system, it should digest the organic material. So you can see, that is exactly what it is starting to do.” The black muck does indeed appear to be disappearing from two of three 40-gallon tanks of water and mud in a lab at the Naval Academy. Tank 1 serves as a control against which the others can be compared. Tank 2 has tubes that provide aeration through the bottom of the mud. Tank 3 is receiving both aeration and large amounts of helpful bacteria. Preliminary data gathered daily by Midshipman Annie Folkie of Charlottesville, Va., indicate that by at least one measure, the combination of aeration and bacteria is working. Four months into the study, Tank 3 has less than half of the harmful phosphates per liter than the control tank has. Tank 2 isn’t far behind Tank 3. A sniff from each tank tells a promising story. Mud from the control tank has an unpleasant stench. No odor was detectable from the tank that received bacteria and aeration. In a time of stagnant government grants, tackling the entire bay’s muck problem is arguably too daunting for any organization. But the South River Federation’s mission is so geographically limited — the watershed of the South River, which flows into the bay south of Annapolis — that an intensive project focused on one small branch, Church Creek, makes sense. (The federation has six employees, hundreds of volunteers and an annual budget of $1 million.) Black muck is one of many things afflicting the Chesapeake, said Tom Horton, a professor of environmental studies at Salisbury University. “If you were to list your bay problems, [the black muck] certainly wouldn’t make the top three, but that’s because the top three are enormous,” Horton said. “But yeah, it’s significant. For a few reasons. One, a lot of these little [tributaries] have been ignored. And two, you have a lot of people there. If you can bring the crab harvest back there, then it makes a huge difference for people living around the bay. There really isn’t one magic bullet or even five magic bullets. This seems like a smart thing to try.” Both types of bacterium that the Mullers are using are found in the bay but not normally at the high concentrations used in products such as Rid-X. They have not been genetically engineered; in other words, no corporation has an exclusive claim on their use or manufacture. One scientist who is not involved in the project wonders how the method could be applied on a wider scale, given that the Chesapeake watershed includes more than 150 major rivers and creeks, plus thousands of smaller tributaries. Its more than 11,000 miles of shoreline are a much more complicated system than those three experimental tanks. “On the implementation side, how do you apply this product, and how much would it cost?” asked Jeffrey Cornwell, a research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science. “Aeration on such large scales can be quite difficult and expensive,” Cornwell said. “These experiments are fundamentally interesting and at a very early stage; a better assessment of the approach can be made after the work is published and consideration of costs and benefits are made.” Diana Muller envisions a system of reusable flexible tubes that provide extra oxygen to the bacteria while they eat the black muck. Solar-powered generators would provide the needed electricity. “It will be literally a half-mile of giant tubing laid six to 12 inches beneath the sediment,” she said. She estimated it would cost about $200,000 to clean up a half-mile of Church Creek. This compares favorably with the millions of dollars that it would cost to dredge out and remove the muck. “The traditional approach would be dredging,” Horton said. “That’s hard, because where do you put [the muck]? How do you contain it? How much do you disrupt the bank [of the creek]? The idea of treating the problem in place is the way to go, if it can be done. Dredging has a lot of problems — permits required. I think it’s well-nigh impossible. “You can quick-start — supercharge — the biological cycling by oxygenating the sediment. That’s a lot cheaper.” If a bio-remediation project such as this worked, the dead zones in tidal creek areas might shrink. “You might see the return of some of your fish populations,” Andrew Muller said. “It also means you could start putting back those oyster populations.” Oyster restoration has been a high-profile goal for improving the health of the Chesapeake. One oyster typically cleans seven to 10 gallons of water per day and converts excess nutrients into food for other species. But oysters are not the first step. The bivalves live on oxygenated water, which requires stream bottoms with the right balance of microbes and aquatic plants. “That’s another part of the key to this,” Andrew Muller said. “Right now in many locations [the habitat is] just not healthy enough for oysters to get ahead of the curve. . . . They’re not really getting ahead to the point where they’re able to efficiently filter to make a huge difference. . . . This has huge implications for oyster restoration, blue crab populations, anything that seems either fixed or slow-moving.” Dealing with the black muck is necessary to allow oysters to thrive. “To actually improve the Chesapeake Bay in terms of restoration, what we need to do is remediate the tidal and the non-tidal areas to a point where we can reintroduce species like oysters,” Andrew Muller said. “We can’t do it backwards. We can’t put in oysters without cleaning the environment to a point where they can actually survive and thrive.” “This is probably the only way you’re going to deal with this stuff,” Horton said, “short of waiting 300 years or so. I think they should probably go with it.” Read more: As females go, so goes the population

Sea turtles returned to the wild at state park in St. Mary’s County

A crowd gathered one day last month to watch seven rehabilitated sea turtles saunter into the water. The marine creatures — one green turtle and six Kemp’s ridley turtles — were released June 22 at Point Lookout State Park in St. Mary’s County to cheers and a barrage of photographs from beachgoers. The turtles were ready to return after going through months of rehabilitation. Sea turtles frequent the Chesapeake Bay in the summer because it’s a source of food. The released turtles will probably stay in the bay for the rest of the summer before migrating south in the fall, staff members at the National Aquarium in Baltimore said. Park staff members informed visitors of the release. “We’ve got a pretty nice following today,” said Christy Bright, park manager at Point Lookout. Three of the turtles came from the National Aquarium; they were the aquarium’s 100th, 101st and 102nd successfully rehabilitated marine animals. The other turtles were released by staff members from the National Marine Life Center in Buzzards Bay, Mass., which helps stranded or distressed sea turtles. A particularly cold winter stunned sea turtles in record numbers, according to the Baltimore aquarium, which took in 13 for rehabilitation in December. Several were taken to Florida for rehabilitation and released this year. One loggerhead turtle was still undergoing rehabilitation at the aquarium. Point Lookout is an ideal release spot because of the salinity and water temperature this time of year, said Jennifer Dittmar, who oversees the aquarium’s animal rescue operations. “The midbay area is a very common area for sea turtles to hang out in this time of the year,” Dittmar said. The beach at Point Lookout offers an easy, low-energy route for the turtles to make their reentry into the wild, she said. Other turtles have been released directly into the Atlantic Ocean, especially if it is later in the summer when the ocean’s water temperature is higher, she said. Duckie and Bender, two Kemp’s ridley turtles, and Willard, a green turtle, were special for the staff after the aquarium hit its historic mark of 100 rehabilitated marine animals, Dittmar said. The aquarium began its rehabilitation program for sea turtles and other marine life found along the Delmarva Peninsula in 1991. It released its 50th animal in 2003. The rescue team has cared for seals, sea turtles, rough-toothed dolphins, a harbor porpoise, a pygmy sperm whale and a manatee. In the past, some sea turtles were tagged with location transmitters before they were released. The seven returned to the wild in June did not have the transmitters. The goal is to return healthy animals to their natural habitats.

Some Maryland watermen hope for new rules to strengthen their crab harvest

Joel Hayden’s investment, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of yellow-painted wire cages, is spread across his lawn in neat stacks. Just beyond the water’s edge, his paycheck is burrowed in the mud. It’s the eve of blue crab season for watermen like the 28-year-old Hoopers Island native, and he is sparing no expense to prepare. After all, here at the southern edge of Maryland’s share of the Chesapeake Bay, there is only a short springtime window before the biggest crabs head north to fresher waters. Next month, Hayden will begin scattering hundreds of the handmade crab pots around nearby creeks. If there are as many of the blue-legged crustaceans as watermen and scientists expect, it will be a busy start to the season. A decade ago, the bay’s blue crab population was on the brink of collapsing when Maryland and Virginia agreed to dramatically reduce the harvest of young and female crabs. Biologists credit the rules with helping the crab population rebound and stabilize, and mild weather this winter portends a third-straight year of gains in crab numbers. But the rules could become a victim of their own success. Officials in Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration said this month that they are willing to consider changes to the harvest limits if crab population growth remains strong, just as they are exploring opening some prosperous oyster sanctuaries to harvest. For years, watermen from the lower Eastern Shore have begged state officials to ease crab-catch limits. They are hoping changes may be coming from an administration that recently fired a veteran crab scientist and pledged a “customer service”-oriented approach to fishery management. But other watermen and conservationists fear that a less aggressive management style could set back recent progress. And they are worried that a change could spur Virginia — where most of the famed Maryland crabs are born — to loosen its own harvest restrictions, as officials are already discussing. “That’s just a scary thing for me,” said Richard Young, a crabber who sells his harvest at Coveside Crabs in Dundalk. “I look at it as a long-term thing. I want to be able to go out and catch crabs for the rest of my life.” Biologists say any changes to crab harvest policies would come at a still-critical time for the species, which is naturally prone to erratic swings in fortune. In 2008, with crab harvests and population estimates among the lowest on record, former Maryland and Virginia governors Martin O’Malley and Tim Kaine signed what was considered a landmark agreement. Through limits on the timing and size of harvests, they cut the harvest of female crabs by more than one-third. “At the time, scientists were saying the population may be on the precipice of collapse,” said Bruce Vogt, ecosystem science and synthesis manager in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chesapeake Bay office. It has worked, Vogt and other scientists say. The number of spawning-age females is approaching the 215 million target they set as necessary for a sustainable population. The total number of crabs has shown steady improvement since 2014. This season is forecast to be another strong one, coming after a mild winter. Cold temperatures typically kill off a share of the population. For most watermen around the bay, that is unequivocally good news. The more plentiful and muscular their catch, the more money they make. On the lower Eastern Shore, though, there are worries local watermen will not share in the bounty as much. The biology and geography of the crab life cycle means they mostly catch small crabs that are picked for crab cake meat — and a rule that predates the 2008 agreement means they have to throw the smallest ones back. A Maryland crab’s life begins in Virginia’s saltier waters, and its earliest stages of growth happen just offshore. It then relies on tides and weather to make it up the Chesapeake and spends the winter hibernating in the mud before temperatures warm, allowing it to resume growing and molting, ambling its way up and around the bay through the summer. Because bigger crabs typically leave lower bay tributaries for less salty waters, usually by July 4, the catch there is smaller and less plentiful until crabs pass through on their way south in the fall, Dorchester County watermen say. For much of the summer, they have to throw back a meaningful share of what they catch because it is smaller than state policy allows. “Sometimes it’ll make the difference between you being able to work and not being able to work,” said Thomas “Bubby” Powley, a Dorchester waterman for 45 years. Lower Shore watermen have for years pleaded for the ability to catch crabs as small as five inches across throughout the season, which runs from April into December. Under current rules, that minimum size increases by a quarter-inch in July, a significant hardship, they say. Their request has been repeatedly denied in recent years, according to Brenda Davis, who until February served as manager of the crab fishery for the state Department of Natural Resources. Davis made clear her resistance to changing the rule, and many watermen and environmentalists believe that is what got her fired. Natural Resources Secretary Mark Belton would not discuss his decision to fire Davis, saying it was a confidential personnel matter. But he told lawmakers the Republican Hogan administration agreed with watermen that they had been ignored under O’Malley, a Democrat, and is “committed to providing the utmost customer service” going forward. He testified that any policy revisions would depend on the results of an annual crab population survey, expected in early May. If crab numbers rise, “that leaves room for a lot of discussion,” he said. Others said they are nervous but open to a rule change. They credit the policies with helping them catch bigger, more valuable crabs — but also emphasize that the rules were intended to be slackened if populations grew. “Most of the guys in the upper part of the bay aren’t for changing it right now,” said Chuckie White, a waterman on Kent Island. “They want a couple years of a really, really good rebound.” Scientists and bay advocates say loosening the rules now could be dangerous but acknowledge that if the harvest rules work, they should be eased eventually. Allison Colden, Maryland fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said her organization has “cautious optimism” that the bay’s crabs are more resilient than they were a decade ago. But the species is prone to suffering from unfavorable weather or predation, she said. “Given the amount of variability that still exists, we’re at a critical point in determining if that positive trend is going to continue,” she said. In Virginia, officials have for several years been considering whether to allow, for the first time since the 2008 agreement, wintertime dredging of hibernating crabs. The debate has remained grounded in science and avoided political drama, said Rom Lipcius, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who helps lead the annual bay crab survey. He said he did not think changes in Maryland policy would influence Virginia regulators. ** Baltimore Sun  **

Yellow perch, a small treasure

A few weeks ago, Dean Gold posted a comment on Facebook that caught my eye. Long a champion of local and sustainable products, the chef-owner ofDino, the rustic Italian enoteca in Cleveland Park, was rhapsodizing about a delivery of yellow perch on its way to him. The small fish had been caught in a Chesapeake estuary just the day before. Although he declared perch’s flesh superb, there was something else he appreciated: “The real treat isn’t simply the sweet, meaty and mild flesh, but the roe [sac] that each fish contains. Much as with shad, the eggs are the best part of the fish. [They are] firm, moist and not fishy in any way.” Yellow perch start making their way to the Chesapeake Bay’s shallow, estuarial waters in January in preparation for spawning in the spring; hence, the roe sacs. To preserve the spawning stock, Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources limits commercial yellow perch fishing in the upper part of the bay and the Patuxent and Chester rivers to a 48,220-pound quota and a short season: January, February and until March 10 or when the quota is reached, whichever comes first. That the fish is local, managed, seasonal and of limited supply appeals to chefs. Dino is one of maybe a dozen Washington area eateries that offer yellow perch. In his post, Gold described how he prepares it: He wraps the roe in bacon, pan-fries it alongside the whole fish and serves the dish with a sage and lemon salsa. A week prior, Spike Gjerde, of Baltimore’s Woodberry Kitchen, served a yellow perch course during a guest-chef stint he did in Washington at Rogue 24. He poached the roe whole in bacon fat, browned it a saute pan and then sliced and plated it with a crisped perch fillet, spelt toast and creamy sunchoke puree. Heretofore I had never thought of yellow perch as a prized local delicacy; all of a sudden two chefs were singing its praises in a week’s time. I always had associated yellow perch with Lake Erie or Midwest fish fries. Steve Vilnit, whom Gold credits for introducing him to yellow perch, was hired two years ago by Maryland’s DNR to promote the state’s seafood, putting to effective use the 10 years of experience and connections he acquired working in the seafood industry. Now he connects watermen with potential customers. And he helps the watermen make more money without necessarily having to catch more fish. Yellow perch is an excellent case in point. That the fish is popping up in area restaurants and fish stores is a recent phenomenon that reflects what can happen when effective fishery management and clever marketing come together. “Yellow perch went from a fishery that was pretty depleted in the ’80s and ’90s, but by changing the way it was harvested, it has rebounded,” says Vilnit. There was no local demand for the fish; it was being frozen and shipped to the Midwest. Two years ago, the commercial fishermen were making about $1 a pound, Vilnit says. Now they’re getting closer to $3. (Yellow perch sell at retail for $5 to $8 per pound; their average weight is 8 to 12 ounces each.) That’s due in large part, though he’s humble about it, to Vilnit’s efforts. He takes chefs, wholesalers and retailers on the water to show them that there is a great, local, managed fish right in their own back yard. “It’s been a 10-year process to gather data to manage the perch the way we do now,” DNR biologist Paul Piavis said in a phone interview. “In the early 2000s, we added a maximum size limit of 11 inches to the already existing minimum size limit of 81 / 2 inches. That preserves the spawning stock,” he said. By 2007, the DNR had collected enough data to produce a stock assessment and impose the current quota. To account for the fish, watermen must call in their catch to the DNR, tag each fish through the mouth and gill with numbered tags supplied by the DNR and sell the fish with its Maryland tag attached. On a frigid Thursday a couple of weeks ago, Vilnit and I headed out on the Bush River, a Chesapeake estuary 15 miles north of Baltimore, with waterman (and jokester) Tony Conrad and two of his helpers. Conrad, 37, who has a degree in criminal justice from Towson State University, left the corporate world to pursue his lifelong passion. He and his wife, Andrea, own Conrad’s Crab and Seafood Market in Parkville, near Baltimore, where the couple sell their catch directly. As it turns out, Conrad was the source of both Gold’s and Gjerde’s perch. That morning on Conrad’s 25-foot Carolina skiff involved the watermen pulling in 10 of the 27 fyke nets they had set up at various points along the river’s shoreline, emptying them into the boat and sorting the catch. By-catch (such as mud shad, catfish and pumpkinseed) and any yellow perch not between 81 / 2 and 11 inches got thrown back. Sunfish, an invasive species, were kept, to be sliced and frozen for crab bait. A fyke is a system of nets that compels schooling fish in shallow water to funnel themselves into a tubular net held open with a series of hoops and sealed at one end, like a giant wind sock. (Conrad’s looked about 50 yards long, with hoops about two feet in diameter.) No bait is required and there’s no stress on the fish. Once each net was emptied and sorted, each fish got tagged, a process Conrad finds irksome. “It’s one of the dumbest things you’ll ever see: putting the same big tag you put in a rockfish through a tiny yellow perch,” Conrad says. “Plus the public thinks the fish is farm-raised.” Not surprisingly, Vilnit disagrees, claiming the tag clearly reveals the perch’s local origin and is needed for accountability. Conrad says you never can predict what a day’s catch will be. (“Each net could have 10 pounds in it or a hundred.”) That day, he filled three 55-pound crates, which we took back to his spotless Parkville market. Yellow perch are distinctive. They have murky, evergreen skin almost aglow with shimmering gold highlights and oblong bodies marked with six to eight dark, vertical bands. As Conrad removed the tough scales and then gutted each fish, I asked him to butterfly 10 fish and keep their roe intact, give me 10 sets of fillets plus their frames and leave 10 fish whole. These I took home. The meat being so fresh and sweet, the less mucking about with it the better, I decided. For the roe, Conrad suggested a basic preparation with bacon. Gjerde and Gold made that connection as well. I followed that lead and did something similar to the dish at Dino, stuffing bacon-wrapped, seared roe packets into whole fish, baking them and adding lemon juice and herbs to the bacon-y pan drippings for a simple drizzle. The roe, as Gjerde had indicated, tasted more like sausage than fish. And the flesh, as Gold promised, was superb. As the size of the perch lends itself to a whole-fish presentation, I fried several of them Asian-style, presenting them with sauteed greens, steamed rice and a warm, mirin-based scallion-ginger sauce, which enhanced the perch’s sweetness. The fish frames from which slender fillets came fairly demanded to be turned into stock and from there into an elegant, saffron-laced, bouillabaisse-style broth, which I dotted with edamame, concasse (peeled, seeded, chopped) tomatoes, and neat cubes of sweet potato and celery root. I lightly floured perch fillets, sauteed them until golden and stacked four each in the form of a number (#) sign atop wide serving bowls filled with light, colorful soup. Like Gold and Gjerde, I’m now a yellow perch devotee — just in time to indulge for a week or two before their local season ends. RECIPES: Yellow Perch Bouillabaisse Whole Yellow Perch With Bacon-Wrapped Roe Crispy Yellow Perch With Warm Ginger-Scallion Sauce Do you have perch questions? Hagedorn will field them in today’s Free Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.

Chesapeake Bay pollution can’t be ‘soaked up’ with oysters

Tom Toles’s May 10 editorial cartoon suggested, based on a May 6 Metro article, that oysters can significantly improve Chesapeake Bay water quality. They can’t. Sufficient numbers of oysters can’t be grown to make any meaningful difference. Few people grasp the magnitude of bay nutrient pollution, most of which derives from inefficient crop fertilization. Pollution must be stopped in order to improve water quality. “Sopping up” never works. All the money we have spent reducing nutrient discharge from wastewater treatment plants has not improved Chesapeake Bay water quality, and neither will more oysters. Improved fertilization efficiency is the only way to improve bay water quality. Yes, grow more oysters, but for the right reasons: jobs and a delicious food. ****Lynton S. Land** , Ophelia, Va.**

Reshaping the Chesapeake Bay, one living shoreline at a time

“Where we’re standing was open water,” boasted Bhaskar Subramanian on a sun-soaked and unseasonably warm morning last fall. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources environmental scientist was standing on a sandy, crescent-shaped beach. Behind him, two small curved jetties, made of rock and covered in grasses, jutted into Chesapeake Bay. Though it would have looked at home in a nature calendar, this slice of shore is actually a cutting-edge anti-erosion project. Scientists at the DNR’s Shoreline Conservation Service helped design it in the early 2000s, replacing a failing concrete bulkhead that had been protecting the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center’s property. The jetties were carefully shaped to protect marsh grasses that the team had planted on a small replenished beach; workers from the center had also placed an oyster reef offshore to help break the motion of waves. This approach was notably more gradual than the concrete that had sharply separated the property’s lawn from the water. Over the past decade, incoming waves calmed by the rocks and the oysters have deposited sand on the beach, and the marsh has expanded seaward, providing critical habitat for the young fish, crabs and terrapins that help filter the nutrient- and sediment-laden water washing off the land. The project represents a small but growing countercurrent to a century-long buildup of shoreline defenses that relied on concrete and wooden bulkheads or piles of rock called revetments. Such structures, which have armored more than 1,000 miles of coastline in Maryland, can halt erosion temporarily by bouncing incoming waves back out to sea. But this protection carries a steep cost: Reflected wave energy destroys marshes and shallow-water vegetation, which are critical components of the wetlands that once supported huge quantities of crabs and fish and made the bay one of the world’s most biologically productive estuaries. Government agencies looking for ways to increase resilience to storms and rising sea levels have begun to experiment with “living shorelines” such as the one at the center. In 2008, Maryland passed one of the nation’s first laws forbidding coastal property owners from installing a hard structure at water’s edge unless they can prove that a softer approach won’t work. Last fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published its first document providing guidance on living shoreline construction techniques. It also suggests how to choose sites where such projects are likely to be effective, giving the practice a shot of credibility and national reach. Subramanian, chief of the Shoreline Conservation Service, is among those leading the charge. His team of engineers and biologists designs experimental shorelines with as little rock and as many Spartina grasses and other wetland plants as possible, and sculpts them to deflect waves so they deposit sand rather than carry it away. Early results are encouraging: Five experimental sites are gaining sediment. And the before-and-after surveys at two of the sites show that species including clams, shrimps and terrapins have increased since the living shorelines were put in. But such innovative designs so far protect only a tiny fraction of Maryland’s more than 7,000 miles of coastline. Subramanian says that to reverse decades of ecological decline, scientists must come up with reliable design principles that can be replicated on a much larger scale while still being tailored to the varying conditions of individual sites. “We have not figured it all out,” he said. By most accounts, the living-shoreline concept was born in the mid-1970s when Edgar Garbisch, a chemist and heir to part of the Chrysler fortune, set out to show that it was possible to restore marshes. Near his family’s property on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he placed a line of rocks in the water a few yards from shore, filled sand behind the rocks and planted marsh grasses in the sand. The experiment succeeded, and Garbisch’s project became a template for how to protect Chesapeake shorelines without concrete. By the early 1980s, alarmed at how fast property owners were armoring their waterfronts with hard barriers, Maryland began giving grants and low-interest loans to encourage projects like Garbisch’s. Addressing shoreline erosion is especially urgent for Maryland and other Mid-Atlantic states where land surface is sinking because of geological processes even as seas are rising because of climate change. As a result, Chesapeake Bay water levels are creeping upward at around twice the global average of 3 millimeters — about a tenth of an inch — per year. Some research indicates that natural and man-made marshes can build ground vertically fast enough to keep up with rising water — provided they receive sediment from waves or water coming off the land. Dramatic proof that a living shoreline can forestall erosion and other damage came just weeks after the Chesapeake Bay center’s project was put in place. The DNR-led team had barely finished planting the marsh when Hurricane Isabel hit in 2003, flooding classrooms at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and properties in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The next day, the team found that an eight-foot storm surge had destroyed just about everything on the property — including a house — but the marsh grasses had mostly survived. “We just couldn’t believe that it was really still intact to the degree that it was,” said Kevin Smith, who was DNR’s chief of wetland and river bank restoration at the time and who now works in the agency’s restoration, finance and policy division. The experience helped convince both policymakers and property owners that living shorelines could be as effective as bulkheads. “We got a lot more projects done after 2003,” Subramanian said. While many living shorelines are not only preventing erosion but also adding land, there have been setbacks. At a site on Kent Island in the middle of the bay, Subramanian and Smith built low rock-and-cobble breakwaters and planted sections of marsh to protect public parkland facing open water. Strong storms and winter ice knocked over many of the structures and ripped out some of the marsh grasses, whose young roots hadn’t taken hold. “We went out on a limb,” Smith said. “And quite honestly we might have stepped a little too far out on that limb.” But the site is not a complete failure, Smith and Subramanian say. Sand dunes have expanded, and the team has redesigned the shore protections to be more stable in storms. And they say they can apply the site’s lessons to future projects. To better understand which practices reduce erosion and increase marsh habitat, Subramanian says he and his staff will survey several dozen other DNR sites and compare them against 2006 data on erosion, integrity of structures and marsh grass coverage. Scientists are also starting to assess whether living shorelines promote life. Terrapin nesting sites have doubled at the Chesapeake Bay center since the living shoreline went in, and oysters on the artificial reef have increased, according to studies done by DNR scientists and colleagues. Scientists have also found that at one living-shoreline site on the Chester River, populations of invertebrates such as worms, clams and shrimp are approaching those found in a natural marsh. “That was very encouraging,” said Thomas Jordan, a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center ecologist who is leading that study. Rochelle Seitz, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science ecologist who is involved in the Smithsonian study, sampled invertebrates in the sand before and after Subramanian worked on a site along the Corsica River in Queen Anne’s County. Within three years of the project’s completion, the combined weight of invertebrates Seitz collected had doubled. Despite the promise of the living shoreline and the 2008 law, Maryland approves more than twice as many structural projects as living shorelines each year. Because he cannot force people to build living shorelines, Subramanian takes skeptical property owners to see his projects in hopes of persuading them. “It’s a very slow process,” he said, but it can pay off. One property owner was resistant until Subramanian took him to Spaniard Point in Queen Anne’s County, where the DNR team had designed a pair of curving protective jetties that Subramanian calls the “crab claw.” “We’d been working on him since 2007, and finally after he saw the Spaniard Point project in 2011, he said, ‘Yeah, I want that,’ ” Subramanian said. “We’re trying to change people’s perceptions of what they can do with their shorelines,” Subramanian added. “What’s good for the bay doesn’t have to be exclusive of what people’s goals are [for] their properties.” _Correction: A previous version of the article incorrectly stated that Edward Garbisch’s wife was an heir to part of the Chrysler fortune. Garbisch’s mother was a member of the Chrysler family thereby making Garbisch an heir. This article has been updated._

In Chesapeake Bay waters warmed by summer sun, a deadly pathogen lies in wait

The last thing Rodney Donald was expecting during his family’s vacation on the Chesapeake Bay was to almost lose a leg to an aggressive bacteria growing in the brackish waters. “I’ve grown up on the bay my whole life, and I’m 66,” said Donald, propped up in a bed at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, his right leg stretched out, swathed in bandages. “I’d never even heard about it.” Vibrio vulnificus, of the same family as vibrio cholera, is a rapid-spreading flesh-eating bacteria that naturally occurs in saltwater or estuaries, particularly from May to October. “We might be seeing more of it, since it is getting warmer,” said Ligia Pic-Aluas, an epidemiologist at MedStar Washington. Total reported vibrio infections in Maryland hit a 10-year high of 57 last year vs. 25 in 2002, according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Six cases of vibrio vulnificus infection have been reported this year, according to the Maryland Department of Health. Last year, there were 14. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of 50 confirmed cases, 45 hospitalizations and 16 deaths each year along the Gulf Coast, where the pathogen is most common, and nationwide as many as 95 confirmed cases, 85 hospitalizations and 35 deaths. The Calvert County Health Department, which has issued a vibrio vulnificus alert, confirmed five infections around the Chesapeake Bay this summer. “It is likely that over the next few decades, if global warming continues, the vibrio will start to multiply in the tidal waters of the bay earlier in the year and will persist later into the fall and possibly the winter,” said Laurence Polsky, health officer at the Calvert County Health Department. “This will increase the number of people exposed to the bacteria over the course of the year, and the result will be a higher average number of cases as each decade passes.” Two strains of the pathogen, vulnificus and parahaemolyticus, can be picked up from eating raw seafood, particularly oysters, causing symptoms similar to food poisoning. In high-risk areas, thorough cooking of all shellfish is recommended. Vulnificus can cause an invasive infection of the skin when even a small cut or graze is exposed to water containing the bacteria. The first symptoms include redness or swelling of the skin, followed by lesions. Those who harvest oysters are particularly at risk because they frequently cut their hands and legs on the sharp shells and rocks. For most people, the bacteria usually causes only a mild skin infection or upset stomach, but in people over 60 and those with weakened immune systems or compromised liver function, the bacteria can advance rapidly, infecting and killing tissue, and eventually entering the blood stream and causing sepsis. If not treated quickly, a severe infection can result in amputation of limbs or death. Vulnificus blood infections in people with liver disease are fatal in approximately 50 percent of cases, according to the CDC. **** On the evening of July 10, after a day on the water in the Calvert Cliffs area, Donald went to bed feeling fine, only to wake at 1:30 a.m. with what felt like a fire in his right leg. “It was real painful, and I started getting the chills,” he said. “My whole body was shaking.” He was taken to a hospital in Calvert, where doctors suspected it was “cold foot,” a problem with blood flow. After he was administered antibiotics and transferred to MedStar Washington by helicopter, MedStar nurse Elizabeth Swanson recognized that Donald’s condition was deteriorating. His blood was tested, and it was discovered that he was already suffering from sepsis, and a culture showed vibrio vulnificus. Swanson had never heard of it. “Being from Colorado, it’s not something I see often,” said Swanson, who was reached by phone. “But nurses have to advocate for patients when they notice a change, especially since within three days, patients could die or lose their legs.” Swanson informed Pic-Aluas, who happened to be on call, that the patient urgently needed her attention. She was quickly able to identify the signature lesions of the vulnificus infection developing on Donald’s right foot — red and bluish discoloration of the skin and large sore-like blisters. The antibiotics administered in the first hospital, and the fact that he underwent surgery quickly to remove the dead tissue where the bacteria was still present, saved not only his foot but also his life. A few years ago, Pic-Aluas had a patient who died from such an infection. The patient, a man in his 50s, had been sailing his yacht on the Chesapeake and had a small cut on his leg. He put off going to a doctor when he started becoming ill, and by the time he made it to the hospital, the infection had entered his bloodstream. He died from septic shock. “It progresses fast, so timing is crucial. Every 24-hour delay means chances are lower,” Pic-Aluas said. “It can move up a limb quite quickly.” Polsky said 99.9 percent “of people who go into the water will be fine.” People with cuts should avoid the water or apply bandages and use antiseptic gel afterward. If symptoms of redness or swelling develop, it is important to seek medical treatment immediately, Polsky said. After two weeks in the hospital, with six surgeries, a skin graft and a bit of a scare, Donald was ready to go home. He said the experience will not prevent him and his family from going back to the bay next summer.

Why haven’t we cleaned up the bay?

On Jan. 25, 1984, some six weeks after the Chesapeake Bay Agreement was signed, President Ronald Reagan drew a standing ovation in his State of the Union address with these two sentences: “Though this is a time of budget constraints, I have requested for EPA one of the largest percentage budget increases of any agency. We will begin the long, necessary effort to clean up a productive recreational area and a special national resource: the Chesapeake Bay.” I was the Environmental Protection Agency administrator at the time, and more than 30 years later, we are still working to achieve that goal. The bay program has evolved into a major multi-jurisdictional partnership that established goals and deadlines and milestones. Still, the health of the Chesapeake Bay (and all of the rivers and streams that feed it) is far from where it should be. Certainly, there has been progress. Since the agreement was signed, the population in the bay area and the watersheds feeding it has grown from 12 million to almost 18 million. The effect of that increase has been largely controlled. The bay and the rivers have not deteriorated much, but they have not been restored. It’s fair to ask why we haven’t achieved this goal. Controlling some of the pollution coming into the bay is hard. Major sources — factories, sewage treatment plants, specific flows into the bay — are largely controlled. What’s left is nonpoint source pollution, the largest uncontrolled source of water pollution in the country. That’s runoff from lawns, streets and parking lots. It’s leaching from septic tanks and from farms and animal-feeding operations. There are tens of thousands of these pollution sources throughout the watershed. They all contribute nutrients to the bay that cause algae blooms, which result in the loss of oxygen, harming fish and shellfish. We know the sources and the location of pollution — where it’s the worst and where it’s increasing or decreasing. The Clean Water Blueprint, in place since 2010, includes goals each of the bay states made and to which each committed. It lays out solutions that make the most sense for each jurisdiction, includes two-year incremental pollution- reduction targets and provides for full transparency. From improved wastewater treatment to agricultural practices, we know what needs to be done, where it must be done, when it must be done and by whom. Now comes the hard part: getting thousands of individuals to make changes in how they manage their farms, parking lots, septic tanks and lawns. Reducing that pollution will benefit all of the states’ water quality, upstream and downstream. But we lack public demand and participation. Look at the bitter controversy about the mandatory stormwater fee in Maryland (since repealed, but now being implemented voluntarily). Controlling nonpoint source pollution will be disruptive and costly; some of that cost will be borne by people in the watershed who will enjoy water- quality improvements in local streams as a result. Farmers in the Susquehanna watershed, for example, contribute significantly to the nutrients that are affecting the bay and their own drinking water; the changes they need to make to control runoff will yield significant water-quality benefits. The ambitious blueprint sets specific limits on the amounts of nutrients and sediments that enter the bay, with interim progress by 2017 and a 2025 final deadline. To implement the blueprint, all affected parties must be given a seat at the table. When that happens, real progress can be made. Puget Sound is proof of that. The EPA was created largely because the public demanded action and got it. Now, those who oversee the bay program need to ensure that the interim deadlines set under the blueprint for the bay are met. If they do, the public will support them. **Read more about this issue:** Will Baker: A manure solution for the Chesapeake Bay Angus Phillips: The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crabs need our help Donald Boesch: Agribusiness muddies the water on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup

Chesapeake Bay report card: Progress on cleanup but challenges ahead

Government officials leading a multi-state cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay pledged on Thursday to continue their efforts to reduce pollution in the watershed but acknowledged the difficulty of meeting their environmental targets for 2017. “We have a lot of progress and work to do going forward,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who leads the Chesapeake Executive Council, said after the annual meeting at the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington. “A strong partnership is the only way we’re going to be successful.” States have struggled since 1983 to curb pollution levels in the bay’s 64,000-square-mile watershed, where urban/suburban and agricultural runoff have nurtured algal blooms that suffocate fish in oxygen-depleted “dead zones.” In June 2014, officials from each of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s seven jurisdictions — six states and the District — signed an agreement that set new nutrient and sediment-pollution limits for the nation’s largest estuary. The federally mandated plan, the fourth adopted by the regional partnership in more than 30 years, requires the seven jurisdictions to reach those goals by 2025 and implement at least 60 percent of the proposed actions by 2017. On Thursday, the executive council passed resolutions to support increasing the forest buffer on agricultural lands and plan a symposium on how to finance bay-restoration efforts. They also discussed how to decrease pollution from livestock waste and increase funding for state-by-state efforts. The Environmental Protection Agency released interim assessments last month of the progress made toward the pollution goals by the District and each state with land in the watershed. Although all the states, except Maryland, were behind, Pennsylvania was “substantially off-track” in its efforts to reduce agricultural and urban/suburban pollution, the EPA said. John Quigley, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, stressed that the state had made some progress, with more than $4 billion in funding and a 25 percent phosphorus reduction in its pollution levels. “Pennsylvania recognizes the volume of work that needs to be done,” Quigley said. He said state officials had plans to improve compliance with Pennsylvania’s limits. Asked by a reporter whether the EPA would take action against noncompliant states, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the agency’s focus was on encouraging compliance. “Honestly, we’re not going to tackle the issue of restoring the Chesapeake one permit at a time or one grant at a time,” she said. The agency “will continue to watch the progress moving forward,” she said. Some environmentalists said they were frustrated by the lack of progress. “Where was the talk about the pollution-reduction shortfall?” asked William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit environmental organization. Baker said he was disappointed by the failure to acknowledge that the 2017 goals might not be met, and he called the fight for the Chesapeake “ground zero” of a national clean-water effort. “If we can’t succeed here, what does that say about cleaner water nationwide?” he asked. But program administrators and government officials urged patience. “The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is one that, although still impaired, shows definite signs of resilience and recovery,” said Nicholas DiPasquale, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program. “It will take time for us to see the fruits of our work, just as it took time for the damage to be done.”

The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab need our help now — or never

Two years ago, you could pretty much bank on it: Leave the dock at 5:30 or 6 a.m. and be back by 9 with a bushel or so of scrappy male crabs. Then it was just a matter of hooking up the cooker, herding the crabs into the steamer and sitting back for the 25 minutes or so it takes to turn them red and scrumptious. In the evening it was crabs for six or eight or however many you could gather, followed by a picking session that left you with a pound or two of flaky white meat for crabcakes. That was the norm, from June to September, as it had been for the decade or more since I took up crabbing and for a century before that. Sometimes it was more than a bushel, sometimes less, but always there was a proper mess for supper if you took the trouble to go out. Last year the bottom fell out. No one is quite sure why, but after an initial run in June, the crabs went scarce. It was eerie, because even in mediocre crabbing years, you catch a lot of little throwbacks, and in the fall there were always many females, which recreational crabbers are required to toss back for conservation. (Commercial crabbers, for inscrutable reasons, are allowed to keep females.) By last July and August, my Annapolis trotlining partner, Gene Miller, and I had scaled down our aspirations, but we still went. Instead of a bushel, we’d shoot to catch a dozen or dozen and a half of good jimmies, enough for lunch. I talked to recreational crabbers around the Chesapeake who had come to the same decision, and no one was complaining. They weren’t going hungry. It’s a sport. But they shared the same deep foreboding. If there were no little ones, and hardly any females, what would 2014 bring? The answer is now in hand: Nothing. No crabs. The last signature species of the Chesapeake to withstand the pressures of overexploitation and declining habitat has all but disappeared from the waters around Annapolis, which locals still affectionately call Crabtown. Reports from elsewhere are no better. Like oysters, shad, herring, rockfish and yellow perch, crabs have vanished. Aha! you say, but didn’t yellow perch and rockfish recover from near annihilation after draconian measures were taken to reduce the catch of both, including a five-year moratorium on fishing for rock in the 1980s? And what about Canada geese? Weren’t they on the verge of disappearing, too, before Maryland shut down hunting in the 1990s? Good ideas have a way of working out, and the time has come to stop pussyfooting around and shut down crabbing for a few years, to give the delectable crustaceans a chance to recover the way geese, yellow perch and rockfish did. This idea will not go over well with the people who make their living by catching, cooking, serving, picking and selling the “beautiful swimmers” that William Warner won a Pulitzer Prize writing so eloquently about. But if somebody doesn’t stop them soon, they’re all going to be out of business anyway, like the Chesapeake shad and herring fishermen and oystermen of long ago. The good news is that there are still crabs around and that they are a remarkably resilient species. The life cycle is short and their reproductive capacity so vigorous that we could have abundances back within a year or two, if we just leave them alone. Among the most extraordinary political steps taken was Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes’s unilateral declaration of a rockfish moratorium when faced with becoming the villain on whose watch the Maryland state fish went under. Can we expect that kind of courage from Gov. Martin O’Malley (D)? Don’t expect anything brave from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which seems to spend all its time mapping fundraising strategies so it can build a new wing on the palace on the bay it calls headquarters. A look at CBF’s Web site reveals not one word about this summer’s collapse of the blue crab. Is it even aware? We have all watched critical Chesapeake resources dwindle to nothing, victims of declining habitat and ever more efficient methods of exploitation. At some point, these resources either go away or somebody puts up a hand and says: Stop! With blue crabs, that time is now — or never. **Read more about this issue:** Donald Boesch: On the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, agribusiness tries to muddy the waters Peter Galuszka: A horror film starring the Chesapeake Bay The Post’s View: A market to save the Chesapeake Bay

Baltimore researchers turn some carnivorous fish into vegetarians

Cobia is a sleek and powerful fish that devours flesh and doesn’t apologize for it. Open its belly and anything might pop out — crab, squid, smaller fish, you name it. Recently, three Baltimore researchers — Aaron Watson, Frederic Barrows and Allen Place — set out to tame this wild and hungry fish sometimes called black salmon. They didn’t want to simply domesticate it; hundreds of fish farmers have already done that. They sought to turn one of the ocean’s greediest carnivores into a vegetarian. The researchers announced last week that they pulled off the feat at a laboratory in the Columbus Center in downtown Baltimore. Over the course of a four-year study, Watson said, they dabbled with mixtures of plant-based proteins, fatty acids and a powerful amino acid-like substance found in energy drinks until they came up with a combination that cobia and another popular farm fish, gilt-head bream, gobbled down. The conversion of these carnivorous fish to a completely vegetarian diet is a first, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and a key to breaking a cycle in which the ocean’s stocks of small fish — menhaden, anchovies and sardines — are plundered by industrial fishing partly to provide fish feed to aquaculture, one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. “It would take the pressure off harvesting the menhaden fishery,” Place said, referring to the bony and oily little fish billed as the most important in the sea. Menhaden, caught off Virginia’s coast, feed a plethora of marine animals, including dolphin, swordfish and birds. The research was published in this month’s issue of the journal Lipids and is supported by a paper published earlier in the Journal of Fisheries and Aquaculture. It’s part of a race to replace feed from wild-caught fish as the diet of choice for farm-raised fish, set in motion by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Agriculture in 2007. Feeding both farm fish and more than a billion humans from wild fisheries is environmentally unsustainable, according to NOAA and just about every nonprofit conservation organization that monitors oceans. Fearing that menhaden are severely overfished by an industry that sells it worldwide for oil, animal feed and sport-fishing bait, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in December sharply reduced the amount that can be harvested. Aquaculture was once thought to be a solution to overfishing in the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers. After the explosion in the human demand for seafood, the need to feed farm fish started depleting the stocks aquaculture was supposed to save. But there is a way for people to have abundant fish and eat them, too, said Michael Rust, aquaculture research program manager at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “All fish — carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore — require about 40 nutrients in the correct ratio,” Rust was quoted as saying on NOAA’s Web site. “It doesn’t matter to the health of the fish where the nutrients come from. By incorporating marine algae, fish processing trimmings, and a variety of plant products, we can formulate high quality fish feeds without relying on wild- caught fish.” The unproved observation faced nothing but obstacles. No one had created a plant-based alternative to the food carnivorous fish eat. And even if they had, when it comes to aquaculture, the United States is a small player in a big pond. Most aquaculture happens in Asia. On the other hand, the United States is the brains behind the development and commercialization of animal feeds of all types and stands to one day greatly influence what China and India feed the multitudes of fish they raise in tanks. Cobia is all the rave in Europe and Asia, and is a growing delicacy in the United States, where tuna, salmon and grouper reign as the meat-eating fish that meat-eating humans prefer. In 2009, Watson set out with a NOAA grant to demonstrate that cobia could live without eating meat. With the help of Place and Barrows, he sought to show that a veggie diet would also reduce the amount of contaminants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury, absorbed by wild fish feeding in polluted waters and consequently by the humans who eat them. A diet free of fish meal was not an easy recipe. Fish eat meat for protein, so the researchers had to give them plenty of that. They needed to come up with the right mix of lipids — fats, waxes and such — that fish also need to survive. Finally, they needed to supplement it with the right dose of a crystalline acid called taurine, the stuff that gives drinks such as Red Bull their energy jolt. Watson said close attention was paid to feed eaten by herbivores such as trout. For a while, he relied on barley for protein. “Cobia were very sensitive to it,” he said. He saw when he squeezed the waste out of the fish that it wasn’t properly digested. They tried gluten, but that slowed the fish’s growth. When the researchers tried a combination of soybean concentrate, protein concentrate, wheat flour and soybean meal, they made progress. The pellets that worked “are 15 to 20 percent more expensive than the commercially available feed,” Watson said. On the other hand, the cobia grew bigger and absorbed fewer contaminants. “There’s no way you will ever in our lifetime get menhaden that’s not contaminated with PCBs and mercury, because of power plants, coal-burning and so forth,” Place said. “The products we have have very little PCBs and mercury. You’ve lowered the contaminant load that humans are eating.”

FDA bans shellfish from South Korea

Consumers should not eat shellfish from South Korea and retailers should stop selling it, federal and state regulators said Thursday. The Food and Drug Administration yanked firms that transport Korean shellfish off its list of approved shippers on May 1 and said it may launch “a fairly extensive recall of the product” — specifically fresh, frozen or processed oysters, clams, mussels and scallops. An agency analysis of the Korean shellfish program found unacceptable water pollution levels in shellfish-growing areas and periodic detection of norovirus, a common cause of acute gastroenteritis, or inflammation of the stomach and intestines. Although the FDA lacks the authority to regulate retailers and their suppliers, it can seize contaminated products that are not removed from commerce. The agency has recommended that stores and distributors stop selling Korean shellfish. The advisory does not affect Korean crab or shrimp or any shellfish grown and produced domestically. Only a small portion of molluscan shellfish sold in this country comes from South Korea, and no illnesses have been linked to that product this year. But in October, a norovirus outbreak sickened three people who ate contaminated oysters from South Korea and another illness also linked to Korean oysters occurred not long afterward. Nobody was hospitalized or killed. Norovirus is highly contagious, but it’s not usually life-threatening. In a message to state authorities, the FDA stressed that the states can take any action that they deem appropriate to deal with the agency’s most recent warning. Maryland officials contacted the one distributor in the state that they know handles Korean shellfish. The distributor put a hold on the products and asked its customers to stop selling the product and return it, said Alan Brench, chief of food emergency response and planning at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The distributor supplies about 30 mostly ethnic grocers and restaurants in the state, Brench said. Most of them are in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. Brench estimates that only a small amount of shellfish is affected in Maryland, about 10,000 pounds. Local health departments in Maryland are also verifying that the seafood does not remain in retail stores, Brench said. In Virginia, state regulators have contacted certified dealers in the state — most of them large restaurant chain suppliers — and barred them from shipping Korean shellfish, said Robert Croonenberghs, director of the shellfish sanitation division at the Virginia Department of Health. The state has asked the dealers to voluntarily recall the product, and all have agreed to do so, Croonenberghs said. Some have voluntarily destroyed the seafood while others are waiting for direction from the FDA on how to proceed. Virginia gets most of its oysters and other shellfish from local growers and other states, Croonenberghs said. But at least one container headed to Virginia with 40,000 pounds of frozen Korean oysters was stopped at port. “I’m confident that what’s out on the market now is safe,” he said. “But if somebody has product in their freezer from Korea, don’t eat that.” The District’s Department of Health said it is working on a strategy to deal with the issue. Anyone who has recently bought molluscan shellfish should contact the retailer to inquire about its origin, health officials said. The label on seafood that comes in bags, cans or other packages should indicate the country of origin.

It is the dawn of the super crab. Crabs are bulking up on carbon pollution that pours out of power plants, factories and vehicles and settles in the oceans, turning the tough crustaceans into even more fearsome predators. That presents a major problem for the Chesapeake Bay, where crabs eat oysters. In a life-isn’t-fair twist, the same carbon that crabs absorb to grow bigger stymies the development of oysters. “Higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing oysters to grow slower, and their predators — such as blue crabs — to grow faster,” Justin Baker Ries, a marine geologist at the University of North Carolina’s Aquarium Research Center, said in an recent interview. Over the next 75 to 100 years, ocean acidification could supersize blue crabs, which may then eat more oysters and other organisms and possibly throw the food chain of the nation’s largest estuary out of whack. That would undermine an effort to rebuild the stocks of both creatures. Virginia and Maryland are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into rebuilding the populations of blue crabs and oysters to some semblance of their historical numbers. The problem extends beyond crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. Lobsters and shrimp also are bulking up on carbon dioxide along the Atlantic coast. Like oysters, coral that helps protect small organisms from big predators is being adversely affected by higher acidity in the waters. Crabs put away carbon like nobody’s business. The more they eat, the faster they molt, a growth spurt during which their shells go soft. Carbon helps speed the process so that they emerge bigger and perhaps stronger, less vulnerable to predators and more formidable predators themselves. At UNC, marine geologists are analyzing video of the slaughter that took place when they put mud crabs and oysters in tanks they intentionally polluted with carbon over three months for a 2011 study. It was like watching lions tear apart lambs. The crabs scurried from their side of the tanks, banged on the shells of the traumatized oysters, pried them open with a claw in a way similar to what humans do with a knife at restaurants and gobbled them down. For crab lovers, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. Carbon-absorbing crabs put all their energy into upgrading shells, not flesh — like a mansion without much furniture. So diners might be disappointed years from now when they crack open huge crabs and find little meat. The research showing the effects of carbon on marine organisms was published in the journal Geology in 2009. The study, led by Ries and co-authored with Anne L. Cohen and Daniel C. McCorkle, and found that crabs, lobsters and shrimp grew bigger more rapidly as carbon pollution increased. Chesapeake blue crabs grew nearly four times faster in high-carbon tanks than in low-carbon tanks. But under the same conditions, oysters, scallops and other organisms struggle to grow, making them more vulnerable to carnivores. Oysters in high-carbon tanks grew at only one-quarter the speed they did in low-carbon conditions, according to the study. “It’s taking them longer to go from oyster spat to oyster adult,” said Luke Dodd, a doctoral candidate at UNC who put the crabs in a tank with oysters. “When you’re a baby, there’s tons of predators that want to eat you up.” But when they put mud crabs and oysters together in the tanks polluted with carbon, Dodd, Michael F. Piehler of UNC and Jonathan Grabowski of Northeastern University observed something they didn’t expect, a response that gave oysters a prayer. Under conditions with lower levels of carbon, two mud crabs polished off 20 oysters in six hours. But in the aquariums with higher levels of carbon, the mud crabs seemed confused. They went over to the oysters, but they didn’t eat as many — sometimes fewer than half of what other crabs ate under normal conditions. Dodd scratched his head. “Acidification may be confusing the crab,” he said. The situation, he concluded, “is more complicated than you’d be led to believe.” Ries said crabs might be getting loopy from all that carbon in their systems, depriving them of oxygen and putting them in a fog. Both researchers said that acidification happens so slowly that crabs may eventually grow more accustomed to it. “You can’t discount evolution taking over,” Dodd said. The Chesapeake Bay oyster certainly doesn’t need any more bad news. Two diseases, Dermo and MSX, origin unknown, have killed them by the bushel for decades. That and overfishing have dramatically reduced their numbers, officials said. Recently, the critter showed signs of a modest recovery in Virginia and Maryland. Virginia, which harvested only 79,600 bushels of oysters in 2005, racked up about 236,200 bushels in 2011, the most since 1989. Maryland had 26,400 bushels in 2005 but hauled in 121,200 bushels in 2011. Oysters are filter feeders that play a critical role in cleaning the polluted bay. “One hundred years ago, the bay was crystal-clear because they filtered it every three weeks, as opposed to every three years today,” Ries said. That is one of several reasons why the two states recently launched all-out offensives to protect bay oysters. Virginia created huge sanctuaries in public waters such as the Rappahannock River where watermen are allowed to harvest oysters on a rotating basis about every two years. The state also strongly encourages private aquaculture, selling plots of riverbed or bay floor to oyster farmers for $1.50 an acre. Maryland has poured $50 million into its oyster recovery effort over the past 16 years. The state now forbids oyster harvesting on a quarter of the bars where they grow, protecting them with a fine of up to $25,000 and 15 years in prison. Maryland is only beginning to develop aquaculture. But along with the oyster, the bay blue crab is making a comeback. In the last winter dredge survey, an annual population count funded by the two states, crab numbers were up 66 percent from 2003. The Chesapeake Bay Program — the regional partnership trying to restore the bay — called it a baby boomlet, with an increase from 207 million juvenile crabs in 2011 to 587 million the next year. The population jumped after Virginia closed its winter dredge season, when watermen dragged heavy metal traps in rivers at a time when mostly females were preparing to reproduce. The season remains closed, all but ensuring more crabs — and more hungry mouths to feed on mussels, clams and the bay oyster. Under ocean acidification, oysters won’t be able to keep up. “As you’re using up your energy, it could make you more vulnerable not just to predators but to disease,” Dodd said.

Wines to warm up with as the temperatures drop

Exceptional  Excellent  Very Good Italy and France offer some nice wines to help us transition to cooler weather this week, including a lovely sangiovese, a mineral white from Sicily and two noteworthy sauvignon blancs from the Loire Valley. For good measure, here’s a lovely pinot gris from Virginia — limited availability, but worth a road trip, with scenery as a bonus. **— Dave McIntyre  **  _Romagna, Italy, $20_ A lovely, spicy and racy sangiovese, it has tart cherry flavors and a hint of cocoa. ABV: 13 percent. Distributed by Lanterna: Available in the District at Ace Beverage. Available in Maryland at the Italian Market in Annapolis, Vino Volo in Bethesda, Wine Harvest in Potomac.  _Loire Valley, France, $19_ This is terrific sauvignon blanc, crisp and mineral, with a saline bite to the finish that makes it an ideal partner to seafood. ABV: 12 percent. Distributed by Dionysus: Available in the District at Cleveland Park Wine and Spirits, Rodman’s. Available in Maryland at Balducci’s and Bradley Food and Beverage in Bethesda, Wine Source in Baltimore. Available in Virginia at Balducci’s (Alexandria, McLean), J. Emerson Fine Wines & Cheese in Richmond.  _Loire Valley, France, $21_ Pouilly Fumé lies in Sancerre’s shadow, having many of the same qualities but less glamour (and a lower price). Value hunters, take note. This sauvignon blanc, from the ripe 2015 vintage, is mouth-filling with orchard fruit flavors, and perhaps less mineral than we might expect from the Loire in a cooler vintage. ABV: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Dionysus: Available in the District at Cleveland Park Wine and Spirits, MacArthur Beverages, Rodman’s; on the list at Kapnos. Available in Maryland at Balducci’s and Bradley Food and Beverage in Bethesda, Rodman’s (White Flint), Wine Source in Baltimore; on the list at Kapnos Kouzina in Bethesda. Available in Virginia at Balducci’s (Alexandria, McLean), J. Emerson Fine Wines and Cheese in Richmond.  _Virginia, $19_ From a new winery in Upperville, in Virginia’s Fauquier County, this wine had me puzzled: It’s labeled pinot gris, suggesting Alsace as its model, but its fresh acidity suggested the lighter Italian pinot grigio style. Yet as the wine warmed up (another reminder not to drink our white wines too cold from the refrigerator), I noticed its body and a sly, sneaky richness. Delicious. ABV: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Virginia Wine Distributing: Available in Virginia at Local Taste in Upperville (the winery’s tasting room).  _Sicily, Italy, $13_ Crisp and citrusy, this wine reveals a hint of Meyer lemon. Pair it with antipasti such as olives, lighter pasta dishes or fish. ABV: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Lanterna: Available in the District at Ace Beverage; on the list at Bibiana. Available in Maryland at the Italian Market in Annapolis, Wine Harvest in Potomac. Availability information is based on distributor records. Wines might not be in stock at every listed store and might be sold at additional stores. Prices are approximate. Check Winesearcher.com to verify availability, or ask a favorite wine store to order through a distributor. **More fromFood:** Wine

Cracking the code on crabmeat

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Food section’s recent crab taste test — well, other than the winner — was that the judges scored all four samples higher in appearance than in taste. Coincidence? Or evidence of a certain truth about jumbo lump crab: that the smooth, pearl-like beauty of the shellfish muscles prompts a gustatory anticipation that the meat doesn’t always satisfy. Or maybe this is more accurate: The anticipation is satisfied only by a certain crab sold at a certain time of the year, when the meat is sweet and fatty. The world of crabmeat has become so complicated — and so international, with producers in Venezuela, China, the Philippines and Indonesia — that it’s nearly impossible to know which country’s product (or even what species) has been used in your “Maryland crab cake,” that iconic sandwich of the Chesapeake region. That, in part, is what drove the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to launch a program in May called True Blue, which certifies and promotes restaurants that use 100 percent Maryland blue crab. True Blue has received scads of publicity since its debut over the Memorial Day weekend, many of the stories emphasizing the years of fraud perpetuated on an unwitting public, which has apparently gobbled down oceans of imported Indonesian blue swimming crab billed as Maryland blue crab. But the premise of the program has rarely been challenged: that the 600,000-plus pounds of blue crabmeat pulled annually from the Chesapeake Bay ****is worthy of state protection, sort of like French champagne or Italian Neapolitan pizza. Could a diner even tell the difference between, say, the fresh blue crabmeat imported from Venezuela and the fresh blue crabmeat processed from the Chesapeake? That was the underlying question of our taste test, which Dino chef and owner Dean Gold hosted at his Cleveland Park restaurant in June. Historically, the strike against the tens of millions of pounds of imported jumbo lump and backfin crab — at least the stuff from countries other than Venezuela — has been the pasteurization process. After the crabs are harvested, cooked and picked, the meat is sealed into airtight cans and heated to a temperature of about 185 degrees, then cooled quickly. The process kills off any pathogens in the tins. Critics have accused pasteurization of adversely affecting crabmeat’s natural sweetness and texture. But veteran crab men like William Ruark, the 80-year-old president of W.T. Ruark & Co., a Maryland processor that has been in business since 1948, say that’s just not true. “It’s the closest thing you can get to fresh,” Ruark says. “If it’s done right, there’s not that much difference” between fresh and pasteurized crabmeat. One step that may affect flavor is the cooking of the crabs. Some processors boil the shellfish, but in Maryland, they steam them under pressure, with equipment that cooks the meat to a temperature of 235 degrees. Steaming doesn’t inject water into the crab, says Jack Brooks, the 60-year-old owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a seafood processing facility in Cambridge, Md. With boiling, Brooks adds, “you’re introducing a lot of water into the crabs,” which adds weight and reduces flavor. The truth is, a number of factors can affect the quality of the crab on your plate, some of which have little to do with the shellfish itself or where it was harvested. (Incidentally, crabs are generally resistent to commercial aquaculture practices, because the shellfish have a habit of cannibalizing each other.) Transportation, in particular, can be a problem for overseas processors who export their crabmeat to the United States. Fresh Venezuelan crab, for example, can “turn on a dime” if somewhere along its journey, the temperature of the meat rises above the danger zone of 40 degrees for a few hours, says Jimmy Phelan, a sales manager for Mister Fish in Baltimore. Phelan worked several years with a company that imported crab from Venezuela. Good crabmeat, like any other animal product, is the result of good-quality feed and good-quality habitat, experts say. The crabbers around the Chesapeake, of course, think their brackish waters offer the best of all possible worlds: succulent razor clams and soft-shell clams for blue crabs to feast on, and cold waters in the fall and winter that force the crabs into deep-water dormancy, where they store up reserves of rich, delicious fat. (Those fall-season specimens, in fact, are considered the finest Maryland has to offer.) All of this information naturally leads to some basic tips on buying commercial crabmeat: After you’ve decided on grade — in descending order: jumbo lump, super lump, backfin, special and claw meat — look for crab in plastic eight- or 16-ounce tubs. Those are filled with fresh meat, with a shelf life of approximately 10 to 14 days when refrigerated. Maryland tubs are identifiable by the processor’s name and its license number which will start with the letters, “MD,” followed by two or three digits. These local containers will have traveled a tiny fraction of the distance traversed by their Venezuelan counterparts, sometimes under better conditions than those afforded by Third-World processors. Ask your fishmonger how long the tubs have been sitting in the store. The metal cans contain pasteurized crabmeat only, often from countries that sell a different species of shellfish, like the red swimming crab from China. Would our taste testers show a Maryland blue crab partisanship? Would our voting match the results of a blind taste test last year at the Maryland State Fair, where the public favored the state’s blue crabs more than 50 percent of the time over meat imported from China, Venezuela and Indonesia? Find out in the chart below. RECIPES: Goan Crab Masala Crab Pancakes with Sweet-Spicy Hoisin Sauce Summer Crab Cakes Crab Spring Rolls With Grapefruit and Avocado Crab Crostini With Maple-Mustard Vinaigrette Crab and Mussel Salad

DDT nearly wiped out these birds. Now they’re making a comeback

The crisis in Flint, Mich., and other cities offered more evidence that water contamination is a threat to human development. In the natural world, a new U.S. Geological Survey study shows, the same is true for wildlife. Recovering from damage caused by DDT — dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane — and PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls, ospreys in the Chesapeake Bay are climbing back toward their historic numbers. An estimated 10,000 adult fish hawk pairs are expected to start brooding over nests with two to three eggs each next week, a far cry from the 1,500 pairs when the chemicals were widely used in the early 1970s. DDT and PCBs built up in the fish the ospreys ate and made their egg shells so thin that adults crushed their progeny when they nested on them. The chemicals had a similar effect on eagles across America and giant condors in California before they were banned in, respectively, 1972 and 1979. As a result, ospreys have rebounded, according to a three-year study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Researchers found that young ospreys are still exposed to PBDEs — polybrominated diphenyl ethers used in flame retardant, the USGS said. “Yet these residues had no discernible effect on the big raptors’ success in the Chesapeake region.” There was one troubling drawback, the researchers said. “Osprey nestlings’ blood carried low levels of a biological marker for genetic damage” that was highest in the bay’s most polluted areas, such as Baltimore’s Back River wastewater treatment plant. Nearby nests fared poorly at raising chicks to adulthood. “Baywide, the damage is not enough to affect the birds’ overall ability to reproduce, but it may be having subtle, undetected effects, and warrants more research,” said Rebecca Lazarus, a researcher at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the lead author of the study’s latest findings, published  in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The breeding success of the bay’s most visible raptor, with its sharp golden eyes and curved talons for hooking and flying off with slippery fish, is being greeted as a conservation success after harmful chemicals were stricken from widespread use. The bay region that covers Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York and the District is once again earning its reputation as the world’s largest breeding population for osprey pairs, what one writer dubbed “the osprey garden of the world,” according to the USGS. Last month, both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly passed bills to further limit the use of chemicals, fearing that they were affecting bees. The two pieces of House and Senate legislation are being streamlined into a single bill for Gov. Larry Hogan to sign or reject. They would limit the household use of neonicotinoids, chemicals linked to honeybee deaths. Maryland beekeepers lost 60 percent of their colonies last year, with up to 20,000 bees each. Beekeepers who fought for the legislation are hoping bees can rebound as ospreys have. Fish eagles are found on every continent but Antarctica, but most flock to the bay where shallow waters in tributaries make fishing easier. Ospreys recently returned to the bay from wintering in South America, prompting residents of Virginia and Maryland to train hundreds of cameras on aerial glides with six-foot wing spans and speedy descents toward prey. “Osprey populations are thriving almost everywhere in the Chesapeake,” Lazarus said. “We found them nesting in some of the most highly contaminated areas in the bay, and we did not find any relationship between contaminants and their nests’ productivity.” Seventy percent of the bay’s tidal waters are classified as impaired by toxic chemicals by the Environmental Protection Agency. Two of the most toxic areas in the bay are the Baltimore Harbor and the Elizabeth River in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, said Barnett Rattner, a USGS eco-toxicologist who also helped write the study.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “The issue with the older pesticides seems to have resolved itself,” Rattner said. “But PCBs are still there, and unfortunately their concentration really haven’t changed much in the last 30 to 40 years, showing how long lasting they are. They cause some problems in wildlife, but osprey seem to be reproducing well.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Chesapeake Bay cleanup on the chopping block

The March 22 editorial “An attack on the Chesapeake Bay” prophesized, “If the EPA program dies, so will the bay, and a precious natural resource will be despoiled for future generations.” What a tragic embarrassment that would be. Restoration efforts under the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint are showing real promise, putting people to work, protecting our health and growing our economy. The nation is watching what can happen when state and federal governments cooperate. Here on the Chesapeake, pollution is down, underwater grasses are at the highest levels in 30 years and the dead zone is getting smaller. But recovery is fragile. Without continued effort, the progress and the benefits associated with our progress could be lost. Since the first bay agreement was signed by the Reagan administration in 1983, bay restoration efforts have received bipartisan support. Bay-state legislators, governors, congressmen and presidents of both parties have helped move this effort forward. Recently, 17 bipartisan members of the bay’s congressional delegation wrote to the president to support federal investments in bay restoration. They have it right. The future of bay restoration now rests in the hands of the House. It, too, must get it right. ****Harry Lester** , Virginia Beach** **The writer is chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Board of Trustees.** **The continuation of the** Chesapeake Bay cleanup program seems to be a crisis caused by the Trump administration’s budget proposal [“A battle to keep bay restoration program,” Metro, March 19]. The success of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup program, sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, was measured over 15 years. Why is this program funded yearly? Aren’t infrastructure improvements really the responsibility of the state and local governments? Why, absent the federal program, would the bay become unusable? Would the region return to its polluting ways and destroy the bay? This emotional ploy has no basis in reality. How long must the federal government spend money on a program before the bay is considered “clean” or “saved”? Couldn’t these funding resources be applied to other deserving projects? At some point, the objectives have been substantially met and the continued cost of improvements must be borne by the local governments or the program is a failure. Let’s use common sense in government spending, not emotional manipulation to make decisions about when to sunset a program. ****Ken Sprinkle** , Potomac**