Draft plan for Chesapeake Bay

[Cpt. Jon]

The Bay needs more than this, but it's a start:

http://static.mgnetwork.com/rtd/pdfs/20090911_bayy.pdf

I know Ross, I don't see anything abour reducing the number of Menhaden, Crab, or Oysters in there... oops, I mean reducing the amount harvested...

Though I must say I have seen more Menhaden this year than in years past.

 

[RichH]

Nice plan but like most 'government plans' most of the $$$ will end up in the hands of the lawyers litigating the already defined steps instead of money being actually spent on the 'object' of the plan.

Happened with "Superfund", EPA, now unfolding with 'healthcare', and soon the Chesapeake Bay 'plan'...
Just as always such 'plans' are absolutely nothing but 'welfare for greedy lawyer/shysters' .... and nothing else.

 

[Ross]

Me thinks RichH has a problem with greedy lawyers.
The Chesapeake Bay may present some intractable problems. Today in the Chesapeake Bay water shed we have more forests and fewer domestic animals than we had 100 years ago. But 100 years ago there were almost no paved roads, automobiles, waste water treatment plants and about one third as many people. 100 years ago is the bench mark that is used for the water quality of the bay. So it would seem that the problem is simply people and their wants and needs. People demand more seafood, paved roads, larger houses, produce more garbage and drive farther to work. We , the human population have over populated our habitat. Most wildlife biologists would recommend a controlled thinning of the herd. BUT it ain't gonna happen.

 

[Shooter II]

In the eighties, a courageous governor of Maryland, Harry Hughes, commited political suicide by banning the taking of rockfish, or striped bass, from the Maryland bay waters. All parties now agree that it is that action that resulted in the revitalized population. Ironically, the rock may be having an impact on the crabs as they prey on juvenile crabs. Many now believe we need a similar ban on crabbing. It wouldn't have to be as dramatic as the rock ban nor last as long. Crabs reproduce pretty quickly.
The environmentalists have been pushing for a holistic approach to healing the bay and if that worked it would be great. But decades and millions of dollars has resulted in dirty water and annual fish kills. Time to save the fish we have and reduce the dead fish.
I urge all to google "Thames Bubbler" to learn of the oxygenation of the Thames by a fleet of specialized ships. The efforts of the Brits has resulted in the return of salmon runs to the Thames. Not all due to the bubblers.
Shouldn't be that hard to due similar in Maryland and Virginia. I noticed in January that the marinas use bubblers to prevent ice in the slips. I mentioned to the marina owner that using them in July might actually keep some fish from dying. He said nobody ever approached him but off hand he no objection. Just nobody ever asked. Wonder what kind of bubbler might be doable on the boat. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
Just putting out the notion.
Not a sermon, just a thought.

"There are two kinds of people; those who divide people into two kinds and those who don't."

 

[Shooter II]

BTW Ross,
We are the third most populous nation. Only China and India have greater numbers. While we have over populated our habitat, we have in fact done a "fair to middlin" job of managing our resources. Not that we couldn't do more. The work goes on.

 

[Ross]

BTW Ross,
We are the third most populous nation. Only China and India have greater numbers. While we have over populated our habitat, we have in fact done a "fair to middlin" job of managing our resources. Not that we couldn't do more. The work goes on.

And their environment is far more screwed up than ours. Will we follow them down that road?

 

[Stu Jackson]

I don't think we'll go backwards and down the ecological disaster that China and India are facing.

Maybe the reason they have those problems is they don't have sailing fleets of individuals who have noticed the devastation of the coastal areas and helped to do something about it. We are, in general, a force for good in the community, being environmentally aware.

If there were more sailors off the coast of China or down the Ganges, maybe they'd see just how rotten it was and start doing something about it.

And, yes, it's more than sailors who are environmentalists, but we do our share.

 

[MoonSailer]

Shooter your ideal would have a positive impact. They actually do it on some TVA lakes that have low oxygen levels. All of the crap consumes the oxygen and the fish die. Add oxygen and they don't die. But it would take a lot of energy to pump all of that air...it might also hurt air quality. http://www.tva.gov/environment/water/rri_oxy.htm

 

[Shooter II]

Moon,
There are any number of ways to power the air pumps. I have a slip on the Rhode River. In July on the Chesapeake, we have many, long sunny days. A moving boat during, daylight hours has a wide variety of generation options. Solar power units are available through WM, for instance, at a very reasonable rate. Coy pond aerators not energy hogs. My stinky Yanmar (love that baby) is used more than it should be but could easily power pumps.
The best thing would be to start and then get better.

 

[KandD]

I haven't read the whole report yet... but is there research-funding associated with this : O ?? I'll hopefully be doing my Ph.D. out there next year.

Anyways, regarding water quality; Oyster reefs are a huge part of water quality, and restoration of the oyster population will go a long way. In addition, low oxygen is often caused by algae blooms resulting from f/w run off that picks up fertilizers.

I'm for attacking the issues at the source, promote zeroscaping and restore the reefs.

 

[Shooter II]

KanD,
Wish you well, my friend. The Bay Foundation and MANY others have money. You should see the beautiful, bay front offices they opened after years of fighting development on the shoreline. Oyster beds were plentiful in a bygone era. Research is being done on faster growing oysters. Bay grasses are planted by the acre. Best of luck getting homeowners to give up their fertilizers or the poultry industry on the eastern shore to pay more for manure control.
The single largest tributary is the Susquehanna river. The bay is said to have been created by the Susquehanna flooding/bursting. The Susquehanna begins near Copperstown, NY, flows all the way through Pennsylvania and becomes the Chesapeake. A lot of human activity and involvement including Three Mile Island. The notion of cleaning up the basin/watershed is noble but remediation beats another year of spending time and money on oysters that die or grasses that can't overcome the algae. I write programs and my first boss said to me "when I ask you what time it is, I don't want a program that tells me repeatedly what time it is; just time me the time." If fish are dying from lack of oxygen, aerate the water. If you want to plant grass and make oyster beds, also, plenty of hands will help.

 

[Ross]

I hold that natural selection will restore the oysters to the bay with disease resistant strains if we would just stop harvesting the ones that grow to market size. If we were serious about restoring the bay, the people that make their living catching the few remaining oysters and crabs could be hired by the restoration program at the rate they reported for earnings on their income tax returns and put to work on restoration efforts. A complete moratorium on the taking of fin fish, crabs and shellfish for about ten years would result in a complete turn around for the bay.

 

[Cpt. Jon]

I have approximately 4000 oysters behind the house in our creek (in taylor floats) that are market size now. I have been growing them nearly 3 years. I will probably buy several thousand oyster seed (baby oysters) this year and expand my "garden". I have given a few oyster gardens as presents because whether the people eat the oysters later or not, they still need to grow and to do so, they are great filters. I think that everyone on the water that can, should grow some oysters, I think that when I get the small seed it's something like $25/1000count. Last year at Christmas I went and harvested a bunch of the biggest ones for the family. This spring, I noticed a significant increase in my numbers as they must have spawned and a lot of the spat settled in the same floats... a lot obiously went out with the tide as well, which has always been my hopes.

I've considered taking the oysters out to the artificial reef sites and dumping overboard or to other locations like the sand bar in front of the house (though that would probably get harvested by a waterman). For aquaculture of oysters there you can get the kind that reproduce and a kind that doesn't (both eastern oysters by the way), I of course have the kind that reproduce. Chesapeake Bay Foundation does will give you oysters to grow for a year if you bring them back to them to put in the bay, I have never gone this route because I have not determined if I will eat them or not... or some... or whatever. But I may get a thousand or so from them and grow them in addition to mine.

The steps taken this year to put a moritorium on the winter blue crab dredge in the Chesapeake Bay as well as a few other restrictions have (from what I have seen) dramatically increase the number of Blue Crabs (again, this is from what I see, not from any scientific research). I hope that the winter dredge continues to be something from the past that we never go back to.

I'm not a crazy greeny, I enjoy fishing and catching my own food from the bay, but those spending time on the bay year after year can see the changes happening. In fact, I get pretty irritated that they will tighten regulations on recreational fishermen and not commercial fishermen but they have a strong lobby I guess.

 

[MoonSailer]

It is all tied together!!!! All of that algea could be food for fish if there were fish to eat it. A lot of the small fish are essentially filter feeders that eat the algea before it dies and sinks to the bottom. But people want to catch the little fish so that they are unable to achieve the numbers needed to eat all of the algea. With proper management a lot of the pollution problem could be turned into food on our tables. But you have to allow the fish to live and reproduce. If there are a lot of small fish the bigger fish will have food the birds will have food but when fishermen remove too many small fish everything that eats small fish starves and the algea sinks to the bottom and depletes the oxygen.
IMHO using dams and pipes to move water from deep no oxygen to shallow areas to aquire oxygen would be better than using energy to pump oxygen. Let the tides move the water around...also the water moving around is good for filter feeders. Just big shallow pools filled from pipes from deep water (low O2) that are then emptied through weirs at low tide could add a lot of oxygen. But a LOT of oxygen is needed. But low oxygen is usually not a problem when the water is less than 5' deep... of course shallower is better to quickly add O2. http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/oxygen.html

 

[Warren Milberg]

As a long time sailor on the Bay, I've been reading reports about planned clean-up activities for years. In the interim, things have gotten worse. It may be that, as Ross and others note, the amount of development in the watershed has, and will continue to, overwhelm even sincere efforts at clean-up.

When it comes to a decision about increased development or protecting the environment, the record is clear about which way things will go.

I used to love to sail on , swim in , and eat oysters out of the bay. Now I just sail on it and hope I never have to get into those polluted waters....

 

[dvideohd]

Some great ideas here....

Cpt. John...

Great idea and great work! Win - Win for yourself and the Bay... It would be very cool to doc your experience and do a Wiki - that way perhaps a lot more people can follow your example..... I would, If I were there.....

MoonSailer
"Shooter your ideal would have a positive impact. They actually do it on some TVA lakes that have low oxygen levels. All of the crap consumes the oxygen and the fish die. Add oxygen and they don't die. But it would take a lot of energy to pump all of that air...it might also hurt air quality. http://www.tva.gov/environment/water/rri_oxy.htm"

If you look at the mouth of the Mississippi, then there is a HUGE dead zone for a LONG WAY out in the gulf...

Upstream, at bridges or physical river structures, it would not be hard to "bubble" the water and have a dramatic effect on river oxygen levels... there are more thngs that could be done - cheaply - as well... I don't really understand why there are not "micro projects" there - to do exactly this... A solar panel, the right motor, and the right hose... you can start to see it add up... could even use water flow to "inject" air....

the dead water zone into the gulf is HUGE... and we would all benefit if this was addressed... I just do not understand why nothing ever is done about it....

--jerry

 

[MoonSailer]

Adding O2 is a stop gap measure. The nutrient load must be removed to "solve" the problem. Phosphorus and Nitrogen are the big culprits. Plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus enter the rivers from farmland runoff. Another problem is that millions of people use the Mississippi river basin as a sewer. When all of those nutrients reach the Gulf of Mexicon it promotes huge algea blooms. If there were fish to eat the algea the blooms could become seafood on out tables(within limits) but with industrial fishing there aren't enough fish to eat the algea and it dies and sinks making the dead zone. Maybe a ban on catching filter feeding fish near the dead zones would help.
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0615-hance_jellyfish.html

 

[Jimm]

. Most wildlife biologists would recommend a controlled thinning of the herd. BUT it ain't gonna happen.

As a wildlife biologist I'd agree -- perhaps we could get some volunteers to leave, starting with a few lawyers ?

 

[Jimm]

BTW - If you care to read several hundred pages.......

Federal Agencies' draft reports were posted at
12:30 pm today at: http://executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net

 

[RichH]

The 'real' problem or a 'major' contributor of the problem is apparently only now being observed and is starting to be quantified by the local environmental scientists - release of 'fixed' phosphates from the watershed's agricultural soils. Previously they 'assumed' that these phosphates would remain fixed in the soils but are now very aggressively investigating the cause of this unexpected 'release'. This phenomenon seemingly is responsible for the massive loss of clarity of the water in most of the northern bay; the turbidity is so bad that the 'visibility' in most places is 'an inch or two', not much sunlight is penetrating into the water any more due to the recent very significant increase of turbidity. The water in most places now literally 'looks like shit'.

The suspected culprit: over fertilization of farm fields and other possible (now) bad farming practices in the 'whole' basin, especially the 'chicken farms' on the eastern shore and animal farms in the Susquehanna drainage (one of the most fertile agricultural areas in the US) ... and that goes all the way up into lower NY state. In essence farms nowadays are become 'chemical factories' and are applying zillions of tons of phosphates, etc.

In spite of all the gloom and doom, last weekend I witnessed a 'hatch' of zillions of small mayflies (tricorythodes) in some of the small creeks feeding the bay. Mayflies are a prime indicator of water quality ... extremely susceptible to poor water, and yet they were hatching in the zillions, but much less than past years.

Too many people, not enough recipies.