July 2010 (Chesapeake Bay Foundation) – Oyster harvests tumbled by two-thirds between the 1890s and 1930, but then remained relatively stable at a lower level until the 1950s. Then a pair of diseases hit. MSX and Dermo are both caused by parasites that attack and frequently kill oysters, although they are harmless to people. Compounded […]
29 March 2013 (DelmarvaNow) – Last October’s Hurricane Sandy was a costly affair for Somerset County, hitting Crisfield residents especially hard, with flood waters up to 5 feet deep that destroyed property and in the aftermath, shook the town’s economic and physical foundations. There was little time to escape rapidly rising waters as the storm […]
By Darryl Fears17 June 2012 NORFOLK, Virginia – At her cozy house by the river, Julie Faella spoke as though a monster lurks nearby. It rises under a tidal moon, she said, or when the winds howl, or when rains crash down. She’s seen it with her own eyes. It crept under the front door […]
By Darryl Fears24 July 2011 A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever. This year’s Chesapeake […]
ScienceDaily (May 25, 2011) — A team of 21 researchers from 11 nations, including professor Robert “JJ” Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has completed the first-ever study of the risk of extinction for individual seagrass species around the world. The 4-year study, requested by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature […]
Most of the Chesapeake Bay fails to meet dissolved oxygen goals in the Summer. From 2007 to 2009, only 12 percent of the Chesapeake Bay had sufficient levels of dissolved oxygen in the summer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes the Chesapeake Bay as “highly eutrophic,” meaning that it is highly susceptible to […]
CONTACT: Contact EWG Public Affairs 202-667-698212-07-2010 WASHINGTON – For more than thirty years, contamination from high-intensity farming has been adding to the pollution that fouls Chesapeake Bay, one of America’s most storied waterways. A new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that weakly regulated agricultural practices in the six states of the Chesapeake […]
By LESLIE KAUFMANNovember 25, 2010 NORFOLK, Va. — In this section of the Larchmont neighborhood, built in a sharp “u” around a bay off the Lafayette River, residents pay close attention to the lunar calendar, much as other suburbanites might attend to the daily flow of commuter traffic. If the moon is going to be […]
For More Information:Piper Crowell, 202-683-1250John Rumpler, (617) 747-4306Washington, DC 18 November 2010 As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several states consider action on factory farm pollution, Environment America released a report, Corporate Agribusiness and America’s Waterways, examining the role of corporate agribusiness in the pollution of waterways from the Chesapeake Bay to the […]
By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore SunNovember 11, 2010 Scientists have found more intersex fish in Maryland, this time on the Eastern Shore, and their research suggests one possible source of the gender-bending condition could be the poultry manure that is widely used there to fertilize croplands. Six lakes and ponds on the Delmarva Peninsula […]