On the Bay

When Maryland Sea Grant's education leader Adam Frederick appeared in a recent episode of the “Aqua Kids” TV show, he highlighted an unusual outdoor teaching tool — the yellow-spotted salamander. Changes in the abundance of this "indicator species" can signal declines in water quality. 

Rita Colwell likes to say that Sea Grant helped launch her career in marine microbiology. It's more accurate, however, to say she launched Sea Grant's career in Maryland.

Every spring, female crabs near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay spawn their young. Nearly all of the hatched larvae are swept into the open ocean to feed and develop. But then the tiny paddlers need to get back into the Bay to grow into adults. On an oceangoing expedition, researchers learned more about how larval crabs get home — information that might someday help to fine-tune crab harvests.

When thousands of oysters are farmed in acres of floating cages in shallow water, organic wastes that collect on the sand and mud below can trigger chemical changes that are potentially harmful to plants and animals that live on the bottom. A new case study looks at the effects of these wastes.

The coastal bays along the Delmarva Peninsula need help. Excess nitrogen from human activities is harming their fragile ecosystems. Scientists worked closely with municipal and county planners to develop easy-to-use methods that could help them better manage these effects.