I am a Marylander, the Chesapeake is my state’s great resource. “That great protein factory” as Melkine called it.
How is the fishery doing? Have heard stories that the crab and oyster population has crashed? True? Almost true?
I don’t know how many people live within, say one mile, of the bay but I don’t think I’d eat anything that came out of its waters. I can’t imagine that the bay is a model of a healthy ecosystem.
Eh… the industry is dealing with the same overharvesting issues that many other fishing grounds are facing (especially oysters) and the bay is still battling a lot runoff issues but it remains a large provider of seafood for a lot of the mid atlantic. The bass, oyster, and BLUE CRAB industries are very much alive. In fact, i think in the 2000’s the quality of food has improved drastically since the 80’s when things were on the verge of falling apart.
Crab and oyster populations are way down, and there are large areas that go anoxic on the bottom annually. But the Chesapeake is not ‘dead’.
Part of the problem is ag runoff, part of it is loss of oysters which filter the water, due to an imported disease that has done a lot of them in. But overall, the bay is improving these days.