Bay Grasses

After 20 years, the annual Bernie Fowler show has become a parody of itself. Skinny stick of a man, amazingly boyish at 83 in his denim overalls and straw hat with a little American flag stuck in the brim, holding hands with his wife, Betty, and a group of state and local dignitaries as they march 70 or so abreast into the unappealingly brown water of the Patuxent River at Broomes Island to see how far they get before their white sneakers disappear....

When President Bush signed an executive order in St. Michaels recently making it federal policy to conserve striped bass for the recreational, economic and environmental benefit of present and future generations, his action recognized the importance of recreational fishing to conservation and called for a change in how policymakers value our fisheries. Maryland's elected officials and professionals at the Department of Natural Resources would be wise to consider the benefits of prohibiting the sale of striped bass by designating the state fish a gamefish.

They came to the water's edge carrying aluminum pans that seemed perfect for a sheet of lasagna but were filled instead with a marshy mix of sand, soil and grass. Some slid into too-big chest waders and slipped into the creek, where a biologist dressed like a frogman scooped a handful of brown and green and disappeared beneath the water's surface.One wild celery plant planted, 99,999 to go.That might seem like a lot of celery grass, or it might seem like a pittance when set against the vast waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Either way, the elementary, middle and high school students who yesterday brought their classroom-grown seedlings to Baltimore County's Rocky Point Park were literally delving beneath the surface to learn a lesson in save-the-bay ecology.

Poring over old photographs at the National Archives, a Maryland researcher has found proof that the Chesapeake Bay's aquatic grasses have declined extensively in the past 50 years, depriving bay creatures of vitally important shelter.The grasses surrounding one small island in Tangier Sound have fallen from 6,000 acres in 1952 to 83 acres in 1997, said Michael Naylor, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources."When you look at it historically, it's almost a complete obliteration of what used to be there," Naylor said yesterday.

Underwater grasses, a vital sign of the Chesapeake Bay's health, declined by 8 percent overall last year and by an alarming 30 percent in the Tangier Sound, a critical nursery area for blue crabs.The 5,740-acre decrease, announced yesterday at a news conference on the Severn River, comes after two years of steady improvement in the extent of bay bottom covered by aquatic grasses.Federal and state environmental officials blamed the drop-off on a combination of weather and man-made factors, including runoff from poultry farms on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Maryland farmers protect environment, but suffer strainsOn behalf of 14,000 farm families in Maryland, I strenuously object to The Sun's article that suggested poultry farms on the lower shore are one of the causes of the decline in bay grasses ("Bay loses 5,740 acres of grasses," May 28).While the article acknowledged that a recently passed law mandates nutrient controls on farms, it ignored that farmers in Maryland have voluntarily used nutrient management plans to protect the environment for more than 10 years.

When he was a boy, James Iman used to curse the underwater grasses that clogged the shallow creeks around his Fort Howard home. The wavy green plants grew so thick on the surface they would trap unwary boaters and snag fishing lines.But 25 years ago, the bay grasses virtually disappeared from Shallow and North Point creeks in eastern Baltimore County. So did many of the blue crabs and fish that used to hide in the shaggy aquatic carpet.Now wiser at 43, Iman has become something of a Johnny Appleseed of bay grasses.

HOW IS THE BAY doing? It all depends on where you are coming from and when you started keeping score.A friend from the Washington suburbs, down for a ramble, remarks how "refreshingly rural" the Eastern Shore remains.Maybe to him, I reply; but to me, who grew up here during the 1950s, it seems more a burgeoning suburb.In fact, there is no standard, or even informal consensus, on how the Shore should be, and so it keeps filling with admiring %J newcomers, becoming to Washington as Long Island is to New York.

The underwater grasses that sustain fish and crabs in the Chesapeake Bay expanded by 6 percent last year, reversing a two-year decline in one of the key indicators of the bay's health.The 3,500-acre growth of bay grasses, reported yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency's bay program office, was a welcome surprise because it occurred despite storms that flooded the Chesapeake with record flows of fresh water.Biologists had blamed spring flooding in 1994 and 1995 for declines in underwater grasses during those years.

THE REMARKABLE REBOUND of the rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay is an exultant affirmation of scientific fisheries management and of prudent human restraint. Young rockfish in the bay are at record levels -- indeed, 50 percent higher than the abundance record set three years ago, according to the state's annual survey that has been conducted since 1954.That's exciting news, given the virtual collapse of the valuable bay species in the 1980s and the resulting five-year Maryland moratorium on catching rock that was lifted in 1990.

Maryland's coastal bays - where many beach vacationers fish, boat and admire the sunsets - are in better shape than the Chesapeake Bay, but their health is slipping amid growing pollution, a new scientific report finds. A first-ever report card issued Monday by the Maryland Coastal Bays Program and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science gives a C-plus to the string of fragile lagoons separating Ocean City from the mainland. Conditions range from good in the southern bays bordering Assateague National Seashore to poor in bays increasingly lined with summer and retirement homes.

Mute swans are among the most beautiful, graceful animals in the world, yet Maryland is brutally killing them. Where once 3,500 mute swans graced the Chesapeake Bay, systematic slaughter by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has reduced their numbers to about 500. Why would anyone kill these gorgeous animals? The DNR claims mute swans are an invasive species that upsets the local ecosystem of Chesapeake Bay by eating bay grasses. But these few swans have a negligible impact when compared to other factors affecting the bay. If DNR were really concerned about the health of the bay ecosystem, it would do more to stop the 500 million pounds of pollutants poured into the bay by factory farms, urban runoff and sewage treatment plants every year.

In rare good news for the Chesapeake Bay, scientists reported Wednesday that underwater grasses made significant gains last year in the beleaguered estuary, growing thickly enough in the upper bay to visibly clear the water while continuing to rebound in the lower bay. Aerial surveys found that the grasses had spread across nearly 12,000 additional acres of bottom last year, an increase of 18 percent from 2007, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the...

The Chesapeake Bay is in poor health and didn't get any better last year, according to the chief government program charged with restoring it. In an unusually frank status report, the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program concluded that the estuary "continues to have poor water quality, degraded habitats and low populations of many species of fish and shellfish." Despite some "small successes," the agency gave the bay's health a grade of 38 percent, with 100 percent representing a fully restored ecosystem.

John Neukam has been catching crabs in pots near the Middle River for decades. But this year, the crabs have been dying in the water, suffocated by a bright green algae bloom that is choking off oxygen and worrying watermen and recreational boaters. "You crab all week, you get a bushel and a half in your live box, and they die," said Neukam, after checking his pots yesterday morning. "I've been here all my life - 64 years - and we've only had this one other time, when fertilizer from a farm seeped into the cove."

When President Bush signed an executive order in St. Michaels recently making it federal policy to conserve striped bass for the recreational, economic and environmental benefit of present and future generations, his action recognized the importance of recreational fishing to conservation and called for a change in how policymakers value our fisheries. Maryland's elected officials and professionals at the Department of Natural Resources would be wise to consider the benefits of prohibiting the sale of striped bass by designating the state fish a gamefish.

CAMBRIDGE -- From a cramped office on the Eastern Shore, researchers Laura Murray and her husband, Michael Kemp, have spent more than two decades studying the decline of underwater grasses in the Chesapeake Bay and measuring what that means to the health of the estuary. All their work was lost yesterday in the flash of an early-morning fire that destroyed twin trailers that housed their offices, their computers, their research papers and irreplaceable data. "I just feel hollow," said Murray, after surveying charred rubble at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Study.

After 20 years, the annual Bernie Fowler show has become a parody of itself. Skinny stick of a man, amazingly boyish at 83 in his denim overalls and straw hat with a little American flag stuck in the brim, holding hands with his wife, Betty, and a group of state and local dignitaries as they march 70 or so abreast into the unappealingly brown water of the Patuxent River at Broomes Island to see how far they get before their white sneakers disappear....

The Chesapeake Bay remains in terrible shape by virtually every measure used to assess its health, according to two reports released yesterday. There was little good news in the 2006 Health and Restoration Assessment put out by the Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and states in the bay watershed. The report found degraded water quality, a decline in the blue crab population, contaminated rivers and huge losses in bay grasses. "I think this report really prompts us to ask some hard questions."

Bay grasses The lowdown -- Quick quiz: What's SAV? The answer is submerged aquatic vegetation. Learn what it is and why it is important to the bay as the Anita C. Leight Estuary Center hosts "Grasses to the Masses," a program geared toward restoring bay grasses. If you go -- The free program is 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday at the center, 700 Otter Point Road in Abingdon. For more information, call 410-612-1688 or go to otterpointcreek.org. FONZ The lowdown -- Calling all fans of wildlife. Join the Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ)