Rescue boards in hand, rookie lifeguards hit the beach at Ocean City, Maryland. Their final training exercise includes using these surfer-style boards, often the fastest way to reach a swimmer caught in a rip current. Credit: Michael W. Fincham

 

Pathways for Invasion
Navigating Ballast Water Management
Rapid Response Planning

Dark sentinel on the Baltimore waterfront, the MV Cape Washingtonkeeps watch after its return from the war in Iraq. While it waits in ready reserve, the ship serves as a maritime test facility, helping to defend against invasive species transported in ballast water. Credit: Jessica Smits

 

Building Capacity for Biofuels
Barley to Biofuel
Algae to Alternative Fuel

Roots of a Career

Like a conveyor belt for nutrient removal, this Algal Turf Scrubber uses mats of algae to take up nitrogen and phosphorus. Could devices like this help clean Susquehanna River water before it reaches the Chesapeake Bay? Credit: Erica Goldman

 

Some Natural History Classics
More on the Terrapin

The diamondback terrapin is known as the mascot of the University of Maryland College Park and the official state reptile. This particular diamondback is known as Patsy, and she was rescued by Marguerite Whilden of the TerrapinInstitute and Research Consortium. Credit: John Consoli.

 

Light bathes an oyster bar, with a little help from professional photographers. Veteran underwater cinematographer Nick Caloyianis (pictured here, with light), carefully set up this shot of a restored oyster reef, built on rubble from the Wilson Bridge. Behind him lies the unlit gloom of the Chesapeake, which grows murkier every year. Credit: Michael Eversmier, Aqua Ventures, Inc.

 

Green returns to Fulton Street. For a long time local residents fought to bring back a median originally designed in the early 1900s by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of the famed landscape architect who created New York's Central Park. The historic median disappeared in 1951 with the widening of Route 1, a north-south trucking route. With truck traffic drawn to bigger highways and after 12 years of community pressure, the city restored a 1.5-mile-long tree-lined median to this West Baltimore neighborhood. Credit: Skip Brown.

This Issue's Video:

The Pfiesteria Files Trailer
Pfiesteria Update:
An Enduring Debate

Gene Burreson and Nancy Stokes read an X-ray film showing the sequence of a key section of the DNA of MSX, the parasite that devastated oyster populations in both Delaware and Chesapeake bays. Though X-ray films have now given way to computer screens, the earlier technique provided a key to finally figuring out the probable origins of the MSX parasite. Credit: Michael W. Fincham.

Denizens of a world beyond human perception, bacteria in aquatic environments can perform complex ecological feats. (Top right) Sacchariphagus degradans 2-40, Credit: Ronald Weiner; (middle) Silicibacter TM1040, Photograph © Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc; (bottom) Dehalococcoides ethenogenes, Credit: Stephen Zinder.

The Longest Passage
Northern Passage

2005

Problem-Solving Science Teaching
In Their Own Words
The Case for Environmental Education

This Issue's Videos:

Down on the Oyster Reefs
Rebuilding the Bay's Reefs
A Chinese Oyster for the Chesapeake?

This Issue's Videos:

New Tools for the Oceanographer
Finding Gold at the Bottom of the Bay

This Issue's Videos:

Following the Watermen
Workboat Races

This Issue's Videos:

Remembering the old Anacostia
Planting the new Anacostia

This Issue's Videos:

A Century Of Skipjacks
The Boat Coming Alive
The Art of Oystering
A Waterman and His Boat
A Skipjack Goes Down
And Rises Again
A (Re)Launching Party