Chesapeake Bay Journal

If someone had placed a bull’s-eye on a map identifying the hot spot for waterfowl a century ago, it would have been the Chesapeake Bay, where ducks and geese gathered each winter in “numbers beyond credence or computation,” according to one naturalist. What attracted them were vast beds of underwater grasses so dense, another ornithologist reported, that “a boat with difficulty could be rowed through it, it so impedes the oars.”

The hot spot within the Chesapeake was the Susquehanna Flats, a shallow track near the mouth of the Bay’s largest tributary where, according to a newspaper account from the mid-1800s, grasses grew in water “eight to nine feet in depth” in areas “which are never wholly bare.”

But a century of pollution left those grasses in decline by the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1972, Hurricane Agnes smothered what was left under a layer of sediment.

Out of the Pots and into the Fire: Once diamondback terrapins were relentlessly harvested to provide the key ingredient for terrapin stew, and as recently as 1938, a Maryland candidate for governor called for “a terrapin in every pot.” Today, state officials say they would rather try to keep the reptiles in every coastal marsh.

Chinese mitten crab may be latest alien invader in the Chesapeake: Biologists around the Bay are on the lookout for large, spiderlike crabs that have the potential to be the latest foreign species to invade the Chesapeake.

Migratory Canada geese population stabilizing: After nearly a decade of increases, the number of reproducing pairs of Atlantic population Canada geese counted in their Arctic breed grounds appears to have stabilized in recent years.

Environmentalists seek to halt discharges into Shenandoah: Environmentalists took action Aug. 11 to stop pollution of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River that is coming from a plant that processes sewage from two poultry processing plants and two Rockingham County towns.

Oyster researchers say ariakensis evaluation needs at least 2 more years: Oyster scientists say they remain more than two years away from answering key questions about the impact of introducing a nonnative oyster in the Chesapeake, and they caution that some important issues are getting little evaluation.

68 projects throughout Bay's jurisdictions awarded Small Watershed Grants: Streamside buffers will be planted, rain gardens established and seagrass beds restored as part of the $2.5 million in Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants that were announced in August.

Park Service backs plan to create John Smith national historic water trail: A National Park Service study has endorsed the idea of designating the nearly 3,000-mile route of Capt. John Smith’s Chesapeake Bay explorations as a National Historic Trail.

ASMFC approves compromise menhaden harvest limit for Virginia: A compromise limit on Chesapeake Bay menhaden harvests proposed by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine was approved for public comment by a regional fisheries panel in August, likely averting a showdown over how to manage the small, oily fish.

Tayloe Murphy receives Flanigan award: W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. is the 2006 winner of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay Frances H. Flanigan Environmental Leadership Award.

Executive Council meeting set for Sept. 22: The annual meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council, the top policy-making body for the Bay cleanup effort, is scheduled for Sept. 22 on Kent Island in Maryland.