Chesapeake Quarterly: Previous Issues

Oysters come streaming into Harris Seafood from the Chesapeake but also from the Carolinas, the Gulf, and New England. Local processors depend on product from waters far away and workers from other countries - especially guest workers from Mexico - to keep afloat. Photograph by Skip Brown.

Autumn sunset at the mouth of the West River. Photograph by Sandy Rodgers.

Clinging to any free surface they could find, dark false mussels encrusted ropes like this one in the summer of 2004, when a bivalve explosion took the Magothy, South, and Severn rivers by storm. Photograph by Peter Bergstrom.

A hint of irony graces this trailered boat in an Eastern Shore fishing community. The Pfiesteria crisis of 1997 put watermen ouf of work and led to river closures, public panic, and a loss of $40 million in seafood sales in Maryland. Photograph by Michael W. Fincham.

Dredging crabs is winter work for mate Eddie Weber, aboard the Mydra Ann, as watermen help scientists survey blue crabs in the Chesapeake. Photograph by Skip Brown.

As water temperatures rise and precipitation patterns change in a warming atmosphere,marshes like this one in the Chesapeake Bay will feel the effects. Photograph by Skip Brown.

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. Photograph by 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, Photograph by Ronald Weiner; (middle) Silicibacter TM1040, Photograph © Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc; (bottom) Dehalococcoides ethenogenes, Photograph by Stephen Zinder.

Corralling the rain, a new storm drain sends fine silt towards Beards Creek. Construction recasts the region's natural hydrology. Photograph by Jack Greer.

Like glittering gems, oyster larvae recall a time when watermen dubbed abundant Chesapeake Bay oysters "white gold." Invisible to the naked eye, these larvae of the native oyster, Crassostrea virginica, use tiny hairlike cilia to swim in search of a place to settle. Photograph by Maryland Sea Grant Extension.

Pride of the Wallenius-Wilhelmsen Line of Norway, the 66,000-ton giant heads up the Chesapeake in early May. Photograph by Michael W. Fincham.

Like many other Eastern Shore farmlands, this one lies next to a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay and has a buffer of grasses to slow runoff of sediment and nutrients. Photograph by Skip Brown.

Adam Frederick carries living cargo into the classrooms of Maryland high schools. Photograph by Michael W. Fincham.

Wetlands are major buffers filtering out large quantities of sediment, pollutants and nutrients before they reach streams, rivers and bays.

A summer day from 500 feet, looking north across Kent Island toward the Bay Bridge.

Bill Boicourt, in front of the R.V. Cape Henlopen, before a research cruise.

Bycatch - like this basket of croakers on a crabbing boat - provides one example of how each fishery involves more than a single species.

Getting ready for the start of crabbing season, watermen Roy Ford and son Ryan stand in the doorway of the shanty where they shed soft crabs.


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