Small Environmental Successes Stir Hope for Chesapeake Bay
John Page Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation pulls redhead grass from the Severn River. A half-dozen types of vital underwater vegetation have been reborn in a section of the Severn.
(By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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Thursday, June 8, 2006
When the water warms up into the 50s and the cormorants wheel overhead, Mike Bailey takes out his boat and catches a scent that hints of a time once familiar to every Potomac angler: the smell of a river teeming with running shad.
"It's not a fishy smell -- sort of a salt air to it," said Bailey, who lives in Darnestown. "They arrive in such mass, the river fills with spawning fish [and] all of these birds that have come in greater numbers to feed on these fish each spring. We see bald eagles just about every day."
On land, spring is a season of bad news and dire forecasts about the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. With species depletion and oxygen shortages, algae blooms and temperature problems, there's plenty to mourn in a storied estuary failed by human carelessness.
But on the water itself, spring brings a quite different message. Amid spawning fish and molting crabs, patches of lush grass and windows of clear water, comes a whispered promise: The Chesapeake Bay, historically abundant, will rebound, if people help.
Examples of that hoped-for rebirth remain isolated. Many would call them mere happy accidents on an otherwise grim scene. But they're reminders, said John Page Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, "that this is what we'd get if we work hard."
Grasses on the Grow
Williams, senior naturalist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, eased his boat near shore in the Severn River's Round Bay section off Annapolis. Just beneath the surface, widgeon and redhead grass swayed like ghostly hair in the green water.
"This is the epicenter of the grass," he said. Glancing at the pier stretching alongside, he said: "By August, this'll be un-fishable. Which is pretty cool."
In the 1980s and early 1990s, runoff and sediments from construction along the Severn River waterfront contributed to a die-off that all but obliterated the Severn's underwater grasses, said Williams, who lives on the river. Then came new rules and a slowdown in building that "gave the river time to catch its breath," he said.
Over the past several years, the midsection of the Severn has seen the virtual rebirth of a half-dozen types of underwater vegetation. The grasses provide food for waterfowl and, perhaps more important, offer cool shelter and habitat for fish.
"I watched it die, and now I'm thinking, oh God, how lucky to see it come back," Williams said. "Biodiversity brings stability, and biodiversity in the Severn means a lot."
More Crabs, for Now
The bay's warm-weather crabbing season comes in three runs: early spring, early summer and fall. This year in the lower bay, crabs were so abundant by April that those three runs now promise to blend into one long, continuous boom, said Jeff Crockett, president of the Tangier Island Watermen's Association.
