A century of Bay’s research at the University of Maryland – The Chesapeake Bay Journal

The official science of Chesapik Bay began a century ago with the study of oysters from the waters of the fisherman 8×10 near the mouth of the Patuksent River in South Maryland.

Since then, research on the University of Maryland has become an internationally relevant, multimackp system, visiting everything from crabs genetics and polar algae to climate change and chemistry.

But it has hardly been a year since 1925 that it still does not pay much attention to this fundamental mussels, Crassostrea VirginicaEastern oysters.

This balance between locally important and globally significant is one of the many informative topics that weave together EcologyThe upcoming story of Don Bohes at the University of Environment Center for Maryland or Umces.

This story is somehow personal for Boesch, who has managed Maryland Bay’s research for 27 of his first 100 years – and for me too, as my Bay writing was informed by such research. It should also be revealed that Boesch is a member of the Board of Directors of this publication.

I learned early that doing good science does not guarantee good results for the bay. But no Making it guarantees poor results. Reading Ecology Confirms this over and over again.

The book made me realize that as I paid attention to Bay Science, I underestimated the internal struggles required by Boesch and its predecessors to keep Bay Science in sailing and relatively uncompromising from state and university power struggles.

In fact, of the six men who brought the science of Maryland Bay since 1925, three (not boot) were forced by their posts or left sour.

A charming topic of the book in this regard was the bitter interaction that extended for decades, between Reinald Van Trump Trump and Harry Clifton Bird.

Truit, who founded the predecessor of UMCES, the Chesapeake biological laboratory, in 1925, and retired on its own conditions in 1954, originated from the prosperous marine oysters of plants on the lower east coast of Maryland. His family came to the region only 27 years after John Smith arrived in 1608.

A good -looking, great dancer, army aviator, star athlete and son -in -law of Governor of Maryland Emerson Harrington (1916-1920), it seems that Trust is all that Bird, of the rough and dark oyster community, oysters, polluting , oyster community, staggering community, oyster community, oysters, not.

Still, Bird was not the inclination. He became a long -time and successful president of the University of Maryland, but seemed to have worsened Truit by offering Bay Research no support from the creation. Already in 1960, through a cousin of Crispield (J. Millard Tawes), who became governor, Byrd was still trying to take advantage of the autonomy of university research.

L. Eugene Cronin, a native of the Upper Chesapik (Aberdeen, MD), followed Truit as the leader of the research center and in his shorter years became my friend and mentor. He voluntarily, order by order, edited the textbook for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation of the 90s, Tide turning.

During the years of crunning, studies passing from Bay Cretters to Bay Health, such as the impact of channel and power plants, has been observed. He formed an informal triumvato at the leaders of science in Bay, which includes Bill Hargis, the head of the Marine Science Institute in Virginia, and Donald Pritchard, who heads the Institute for the Bay of the University of Jones Hopkins.

Scientific collaboration at Baywide seems to be unknown now, but Cronin has been working for decades, only to be able to recognize blue cancer as a being whose life cycle does not observe state lines.

One of his daring achievements had much to do with hard science. In the mid-1960s, he hired a high school chemistry teacher Tom Wisner to essentially be the original environmental teacher of Chesapike.

He gave a long Wisner strap, a talented poet, a singer of songs and a storyteller who will inspire generations of student and doctoral studies, as well as to Maryland Martin O’Mali Governor, who gave Tom’s Eulogy in 2010 at the Amces Laboratory, “The Wiz” wrote the song Native Chesapik – Once proposed for the state anthem.

Cronin saw the future of the bay when he announced in 1967 that the pollution of nutrients “is the biggest threat” of the bay.

The over-fertilization of the Bay, which we now take for granted as the biggest health problem of Chesapike, must have been a foot on the head in 1967. Only a quarter of a century earlier, it noted that the business fields contribute many of their nutrients in the water – A good thing about the bay performance, he felt these days of Clearwater.

In the 1970s, Peter Wagner led the University Bay Research. Performed in 1981, it is the shortest head of the center called the Center for Environmental and Estural Studies. His experience in the physics of hard condition and electrical engineering did not impress the environmentalists of his staff.

But one of the best moments in the center came when Wagner resisted many attempts by civil servants to silence his researchers, who were marked elsewhere in the book, “Speaking Truth of Power.”

Neither the state nor the US Environmental Protection Agency at that time wanted to hear that the restoration of the health of the bay would be more difficult and more expensive, which requires major nitrogen and sewer nitrogen reductions, as well as phosphorus.

The issue of the matter took a federal case – before Judge John Sirika from Watergate’s glory – in which scientists from Umsis testified (successfully) against their employer, Maryland.

Their work under the guidance of Wagner has become a model for restoring the health of bey and managing coastal waters around the world.

The decades of Boesch were those with great growth for Umces and Bay Science – writes Boesch himself. They were actually. He moved with dangerous political waters, withstanding authorities who wanted to replace the high -tech hatchers to strengthen the natural reproduction of bay fish and drastically expanded studies connecting the use of Earth in the huge waterfront of Chesapik to cool down with water.

It closes, urging scientists to become more active in providing solutions and to provide good science. This returns to the Truit founder, who called for aquaculture as a solution to the problems of oysters.

Only a century later, we have actually acted on the visions of Truit. Since climate change breathes more virtues and progress of the bay cleaning, says Boesch, we can no longer wait for that long.

The Columnists expressed by the Columnists are not necessarily those of The Bay Journal.