As a kid growing up on Bald Top Mountain above the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, Van Wagner would look down during times of low water to … Read Story
Fisheries News
It was a bad sign last spring when Bob Orth answered the phone and the words spilled out from the other end. “Where did all the grass go?” The… Read Story
With several hours of daylight to spare, Ronnie Robbins and his son, Jason, had already docked their 36-foot deadrise workboat on Hooper’s Isl… Read Story
Environmentalists and scientists call it the “lost” branch. Read Story
Despite longstanding government alerts about the potential dangers of eating fish caught in the Anacostia River, some anglers aren’t getting t… Read Story
More testing has found so-called “forever chemicals” in a striped bass, blue crab and oyster from the Chesapeake Bay, as well as in drinking w… Read Story
Blue catfish, the invasive fish with a big appetite that is overwhelming many Chesapeake Bay tributaries, is probably here to stay. Read Story
Robert Johnson spends as much time watching the weather forecast as he does harvesting oysters these days. Read Story
A new search tool involving not much more than filling a container of water is revolutionizing how scientists detect and keep track of threate… Read Story
A Norwegian company’s plans to bring land-based salmon farming to Maryland’s Eastern Shore hit a snag Thursday night when one of the sites it … Read Story
The Hogan administration is moving to block Maryland oyster farmers from leasing spots in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries where there’s… Read Story
A pair of professors at Randolph-Macon College near Richmond likes to challenge their students with real-world problems. When they asked the J… Read Story
Striped bass can’t get a break, it seems. With their East Coast population in decline from overfishing, the migratory species had mixed succes… Read Story
One of the most crucial fish in the Chesapeake Bay’s aquatic food web is getting more protection from potential overfishing, but not as much a… Read Story
The record for the world’s largest oyster restoration project is poised to be broken with a new $30 million project on Maryland’s Eastern Shor… Read Story
A new round of testing for “forever chemicals” in St. Mary’s County, MD, found “no levels of concern” in oysters or in the waters of the Chesa… Read Story
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a sweeping conservation measure that provides continued support for several key Chesapeake Bay … Read Story
A Maryland man has become the first person believed to have traveled the 203-mile length of the Chesapeake Bay on a standup paddleboard. Read Story
The American shad’s Atlantic population remains at a historic low, despite longstanding commercial fishing bans in several states and millions… Read Story
The Chesapeake Bay is known to many for the seafood it produces: blue crabs, oysters and striped bass. Read Story
Increasingly, as enormous flotillas of plastic waste drifting through the ocean continue to make news, the world is learning that it is awash … Read Story
Crawdad, crawfish, crayfish. No matter what you call the crustaceans, the rusty crayfish, an interloper from the Ohio River watershed, has bec… Read Story
High levels of “forever chemicals” have been reported in freshwater fish and water from a Maryland creek, raising new questions about the exte… Read Story
East Coast fishery managers have agreed to tie future menhaden population levels to the number needed to support a robust striped bass populat… Read Story
Normally, fisheries management aims to set harvest limits at levels that sustain the population of a particular species. Read Story
It springs to life each year in freshwater ponds and lakes as temperatures rise. By the middle of summer, the foliage is so thick and bushy at… Read Story
From Virginia to New York, residents of the Chesapeake Bay watershed were hit with a deluge of water in mid-July 2018. And it wasn’t just anot… Read Story
Overwhelmed by record high flows and warm temperatures, the Chesapeake Bay’s vast underwater meadows last year suffered their largest drop sin… Read Story
Nearly half of all gamefish in freshwater lakes, streams and rivers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed may be unsafe to eat because of high level… Read Story
Scientists are expecting this year’s Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” to be slightly less than its long-term average — but a wide swath of the Bay w… Read Story
Despite having fewer days to work, Maryland watermen harvested nearly twice as many wild oysters last season as they did the previous year, st… Read Story
Virginia’s menhaden fishery is no longer under threat of a federal moratorium. Read Story
Efforts to rebuild shad populations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed took a beating. Water quality went unchecked for the longest time in more … Read Story
A reddish-brown patina has overtaken the Mid-Chesapeake Bay and several Maryland rivers that feed into the estuary. A stench hangs in the air … Read Story
American shad just couldn’t get a break this spring in their efforts to repopulate the Susquehanna River. Read Story
A survey that historically has guided blue crab management in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries shows the population has dipped by nearly… Read Story
Oysters are filter feeders that can help clean up the Chesapeake Bay, right? Many have seen the various web videos showing a dozen or so bival… Read Story
Amid the coronavirus outbreak that sidelined almost all other field work this spring, a handful of Maryland biologists were dispatched to the … Read Story
Striped bass that stay year-round in the Chesapeake Bay are dying at nearly twice the rate of those that migrate each year to the Atlantic Oce… Read Story
By this time in a typical year, the main fish lift at Conowingo Dam would be busy hoisting thousands of fish daily over the 94-foot high barri… Read Story
When event planners huddled last fall at the Baltimore Convention Center for a workshop on sustainable conferences, they chowed down on locall… Read Story
The purse net fishing season for Atlantic menhaden kicked off May 4 in Virginia, but with a much-reduced limit on how many of the commercially… Read Story
He was known by a number in life. In death, he became a statistic. Read Story
One of the longest-running scientific investigations of the Chesapeake Bay is in danger of shutting down permanently. Read Story
Crab season is off to a slow and foreboding start around the Chesapeake Bay, with many crabmeat processors crippled by an inability to import … Read Story
The coronavirus pandemic is delaying oyster restoration efforts in Maryland this spring but so far has not impacted projects planned in Virgin… Read Story
The Chesapeake Bay’s seafood industry has been especially hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, as buyers dry up for oysters and prices plumme… Read Story
Watermen have no restaurants that can buy their catches. Help for farmers who want to install runoff controls has been sharply curtailed. Stre… Read Story
Responding to employers’ calls, including those of crab meat processing companies in Virginia and Maryland, the federal government announced M… Read Story
The Chesapeake Bay and other environmental issues had more floor time — and legislative changes — than they have in years during Virginia’s 60… Read Story