Chesapeake Bay

More than 5,000 Marylanders got permits to carry guns last year; they had to show police they had a “good and substantial reason” to so.  That may be about to change – we’ll discuss the implications with a gun policy researcher.

Then – did you know there's a school to learn how to save the Bay? We talk with the coordinator of The Watershed Steward Academy in Anne Arundel County, which trains community leaders to help their neighborhoods save THEIR tributary.

And – J. Wynn Rousuck reviews Cockpit in Court's new production of Sunset Boulevard.

Audio for this segment will be available by the end of the day.

"Pollution diet," "total maximum daily load," "watershed implementation plan" -- What is Saving the Chesapeake Bay for $500, Alex?

We had plenty of rain over the weekend, but besides that Maryland has been experiencing one of the driest summers on record.  While the farmers have been lamenting the weather, one feature of our environment has benefited from the sauna-like heat: the Chesapeake Bay.  The lack of water has decreased the size of the dead zone in the Bay:  an area of such low oxygen that animals and

farmers dead zone.mp3

The eastern United States just experienced the warmest spring on record, shattering previous highs.  On land, warm temperatures caused cherry and apple trees to bloom prematurely. In the Chesapeake Bay, algae bloomed earlier than normal, fed by runoff pollution from last fall's major storms.  Photo of algal bloom by Chesapeake Bay Program.

Photo of Atlantic killifish from Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources

An ancient arms race on the ocean's bottom pits shell crushers, such as blue crabs, against shell builders, such as clams and oysters.  Research by Justin Ries of the University of North Carolina (above) concludes that carbon dioxide pollution creates acidic conditions that accelerate shell growth for the predators but slows down the building of shell defenses by their prey.

Photo of juvenile blue crab from Chesapeake Bay Program.

For the last 15 years, Professor Wolfgang Vogelbein of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science has been working to discover the causes of mycobacteriosis, a chronic wasting disease that infects a majority of striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.  He believes the disease could be linked to pollution and overfishing -- but now his federal funding is about to run out, before he can finally solve the puzzle.