NEWS
By FRANK ROYLANCE | August 15, 2009
Jeff Brauner of Baltimore was in Atlantic City last month, "and for the first time I can remember I saw some terns on the beach in addition to the usual sea gulls. Does that have any weather significance?" The state Department of Natural Resources' Dave Brinker says no. You just got lucky. Tern populations are in long-term decline because of the loss of low, predator-free island habitat as sea levels rise and land subsides around the Chesapeake.
NEWS
By FREDERICK N. RASMUSSEN | July 26, 2009
After having spent many years racing Austin-Healeys, Volvos and Lotus Elevens, Walter Cronkite finally gave up the rough-and-tumble sport of competitive driving, to his family's great relief, and turned to the sea for relaxation. He wrote in his 1996 autobiography, A Reporter's Life, that sailing was a more "family-oriented sport that I should substitute for racing," but "there has never been anything as exhilarating as driving at speed in competition." Cronkite, who acknowledged that he had read plenty of books about the sea, didn't know the first thing about sailing when he began on a Sunfish in the late 1940s.
NEWS
By FREDERICK N. RASMUSSEN | March 15, 2009
"Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep in the Deep" 1897 sea chantey The ferocious February nor'easter that severely disrupted Atlantic shipping more than a half-century ago nearly took the life of a Baltimore merchant mariner who was aboard a crippled oil tanker. The gale that snapped the SS Pendleton in two off Cape Cod in the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 1952, inflicted a similar fate on another T-2 class tanker, the SS Fort Mercer, that was steaming some 30 miles southeast of Chatham, Mass.
NEWS
By Lester A. Picker | December 14, 2008
Magical is the most overused word when writing about the Galapagos, those magical islands off the coast of Ecuador. Oops! Sorry, but there really is something about these islands that gets under your skin. One visit and you're hooked. Two visits morph you into a passionate advocate. On my last visit, I tried to figure out just what is so alluring about the Galapagos. Compared with the lush majesty of the Hawaiian Islands, they rank a distant second. They don't boast four-diamond restaurants or five-star hotels, and there is not a shopping mega-mall or multiplex anywhere.
NEWS
By Stephen G. Henderson | October 28, 2007
Upon my return from a week's vacation this past summer in Tel Aviv, my friends and family appeared visibly impatient as I bragged about the city's beaches (" ... the sand? Like talcum powder!"), fascinating architecture, great shopping, as well as chic restaurants that serve splendid, fresh Mediterranean cuisine and excellent Israeli wines. No sooner did I pause for air, then they quickly interrupted, and always with the same two questions. "Did you feel safe there?" Answer: Yes, completely, despite several vivid reminders of Israel's perilous geopolitical status.
NEWS
By Mike Giuliano | October 20, 2007
The Impressionist exhibit opening today at Washington's Phillips Collection features big names and the marquee draw of 17 Monet paintings. But what makes the show really pleasurable is that it's basically about people at the beach. With contributions from the likes of Monet, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Impressionists by the Sea serves as a reminder of the extent to which art movements depend upon technological and social movements. After railroads were built to coastal towns in northern France in the mid-19th century, vacationing Parisians soon turned humble fishing villages into fashionable resorts.
NEWS
By HEATHER A. DINICH | July 25, 2007
For Ralph Friedgen's birthday this summer, his two brothers-in-law and cousin paid for a deep-sea fishing trip. It was canceled because of the weather, but they decided to go out anyway. One brother-in-law drove the boat onto an oyster bed. Friedgen was in the back of the boat. The tide was going down quickly. Friedgen realized that if they were going to get off the oyster bed, he had to jump off the boat. They pushed it off, but Friedgen got stuck about waist-deep in something akin to quicksand.
NEWS
By Richard Irwin | July 23, 2007
A Wicomico County man drowned yesterday evening near the jetty off the southern edge of Ocean City while trying to save his two sons, who were being washed out to sea by a strong riptide, said the head of the city's beach patrol. The name of the 38-year-old Fruitland man was not released. Shortly before 6 p.m., about 20 minutes after lifeguards left their stations, a 911 call was made by someone reporting that two boys, ages 10 and 13, were being pushed out to sea by a southerly riptide and were heading toward the rocky jetty between the public beach and the inlet, said Capt.
NEWS
June 3, 2007
Although it's not "officially" summer, we know many vacationers are ready for the season of sun, sand and sea. We're ready, too, with The Beach Zone, a weekly guide to what's happening on the Eastern Shore. From Ocean City to Rehoboth Beach, Del., and Cape May N.J., we've got our nose to the sand in search of beach highlights to help make your trip a shore thing. / / Page 3R
NEWS
By CANDUS THOMSON | May 27, 2007
Let's take a few minutes on this, the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, to consider the treasures she left us. Of course, we have her trilogy of environmental books --The Sea Around Us,The Edge of the Sea and the 1962 hallmark, Silent Spring. But in the 1930s, she also wrote outdoors articles for The Sun under the byline R.L. Carson. The biologist lived in Maryland for 35 years while attending Johns Hopkins University, teaching at the University of Maryland and writing for what is now called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.