The television ad begins with water disappearing into a storm drain as a voice warns that fertilizer put on lawns in the spring can wind up in the bay. The ad next shows a blue crab lying lifeless in the surf. "No crab should die like this," the solemn announcer says.
Then the announcer appears on-screen, carrying a small tub in one hand and what appears to be backfin lump in the other. "They should perish in some hot, tasty melted butter," he exclaims.
From left, chefs Jamie Stachowski, John Koltisko and John Richardson at a Dupont Circle event for bay preservation.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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The federal Chesapeake Bay Program, trading its appeals to the conscience for a startling message aimed at the stomach, has launched a series of TV spots, newspaper ads and billboards in the Washington region that casts the bay first and foremost as a source of seafood.
With the slogan "Save the Crabs . . . Then Eat 'Em," the campaign aims to make residents see pollution as the equivalent of sneezing on the buffet.
"The lunch you save may be your own," one newspaper ad says.
The ads were designed by Peter Mitchell, a marketing executive who said he hopes to reach people the bay program has not during 20 years of traditional environmentalism.
"We're saying you should protect the crabs because they're really tasty," Mitchell said. "We're not preaching to people, and I think that's what's different about this."
Though the ads were running, the $600,000 campaign officially kicked off yesterday at -- where else -- a seafood restaurant, Johnny's Half Shell in Dupont Circle in the District.
There, with plates of fried oysters on the table, local chefs said they had seen fish, crabs and oysters from the Chesapeake become smaller and less plentiful in recent years.
"A lot of the crabmeat we get has to come from elsewhere, and it doesn't really have that rich and sweet flavor" that Chesapeake crabs do, said Jamie Stachowski of Restaurant Kolumbia downtown.
The campaign employs humor in the crab ad and in another TV spot that dramatizes the choice between a lawn and seafood by showing a man unhappily chomping on a sandwich of grass clippings instead of crab cake.
The ads say they're from the "Chesapeake Club," but in fact, they are sponsored by the bay program, a subsidiary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that oversees a massive bureaucracy of state and federal programs.
The bay program generally is not accused of being edgy. In fact, its usual outreach includes sending news releases on algae blooms and sewage plants.
Christopher Conner, a program spokesman, said this strategy has had limited success. It has induced people to worry about the bay -- one recent survey showed about 90 percent of people in the watershed were concerned about the bay's health -- but has not persuaded them to do something about it.
"The trick is moving that concern over to action," Conner said.
After 18 months of surveys and planning, the bay program and Mitchell's organization, the Dupont Circle-based Academy for Educational Development, decided the trick was to sell the Chesapeake not as a cause but as a menu item.
"There's two different approaches to try to change people. One is religion and one is marketing," he said. "We picked marketing."
Conner said the ads would continue until April, the end of spring fertilizing season. In the meantime, other environmentalists said they were reserving judgment.
"I hope that the [viewers] don't think that the only reason to save the bay . . . is to eat from it," said Donald F. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
