On the Bay

Ordinarily at this time of year, Kit Waskom Pollard is cooking oysters. Grilled in the backyard, sprinkled with rosemary and sea salt, their aroma signals one celebration after another: Easter, Mother’s Day, her father’s birthday, maybe an engagement or a graduation.

Thousands of American eels captured at the Conowingo Dam eel ramp are swimming en masse in a huge holding tank, waiting to be trucked upstream where they will be released to restock part of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced schools worldwide to close and shift their classes to online learning—a prodigious undertaking for teachers and students that has thrown traditional education for a violent loop. But some educators, among them J.

It’s spring in Maryland and in rivers and tributaries throughout the Chesapeake Bay, young American eels, called elvers, are moving upstream—pushing and wriggling and constantly moving. Movement is what they are made of.

Making the invisible visible is an important, yet challenging, part of sharing science. It’s one our communications team recently took on with Assistant Director for Education J. Adam Frederick to determine the best method for capturing images of microplastics in a laboratory setting at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) in Baltimore, Maryland.