A report card on the health of the Chesapeake Bay released recently looks beyond the traditional indicators of nitrogen, phosphorus and water, and reviews what’s going on with the people in the bay’s massive watershed.
On ecological indicators the new report card by UMCES, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, finds the bay is making progress, though the watersheds of some of the rivers that feed the Bay are not as healthy.
Bill Dennison, Vice President for Science Application at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, joins the show to discuss some of the new findings. Dennison is a professor of marine science and is set to become UMCES interim president in September.
UMCES report includes a new component this year—environmental justice—where it finds marked disparities. Suburbs tend to show lower impacts of environmental stress than cities and rural areas.
Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources Josh Kurtz joins us to discuss the invasive and indigenous creatures in the bay. After years of falling numbers, are crab populations moving in the right direction? And what threat do invasive species, like the Blue Catfish, pose?
Department of Natural Resources' winter dredge survey is a bay-wide effort to estimate the number of blue crabs living in the Chesapeake Bay. The survey estimates of the number of crabs over-wintering in the bay and the number of young crabs entering the population each year, among other data sets used to manage the crab's population.
The survey found the crab population was rebounding, though below ideal numbers. In response, the Chesapeake Bay Journal reported, DNR loosened restricts on commercial blue crab harvesting in late June. Low crab population numbers last year led an imposed cutback on harvesting.
(Original air date: June 6, 2023)
