More Blue Crabs, but Chesapeake Bay Is Still at Risk, Report Says

A group of volunteers wash and bag oyster shells as part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation oyster restoration program in Gloucester Point, Va.Associated Press A group of volunteers washed and bagged oyster shells as part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation oyster restoration program in Gloucester Point, Va.
Green: Science

The blue crab population is growing again in Chesapeake Bay, but the 64,000 square-mile system of bays, marshes and rivers remains imperiled, according to a report [pdf] released Tuesday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The foundation is a nonprofit advocacy organization that measures the health of this complex system, the largest estuary in the United States.

The foundation said that since the release of its 2008 State of the Bay report, which rates the health of the area based on 12 categories dealing with pollution, habitat and fishing, the ecosystem has rebounded slightly, earning 31 points out of 100, or three more than in 2008.

Among the improvements are increases in the plenitude of underwater grasses and in the forested buffers along the watershed, the report said.

The blue crab population, which is so crucial to the local economy, has also doubled from a low of 120 million to more than 300 million, the report found. The increase was largely a result of the fact that two states bordering the bay, Virginia and Maryland, agreed to limit their catch of female crabs.

As encouraging as these improvements are, however, said Will Baker, the foundation’s president, “The gains are fragile.”

A score of 31 out of 100 is still a very low, he said, noting that unchecked sprawling development is still damaging habitat and introducing pollution into the area. There is still so much pollution from runoff that residents are encouraged not to swim in the bay for 48 hours after a heavy rain.

Among the problems that are not improving are the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous runoff into the bay and the population of the striped bass fisheries. Moreover, the foundation warned, the bay could be threatened by new efforts to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation — an enormous underground find lying beneath parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Activity in the Marcellus Shale increased dramatically beginning in 2009 and is continuing to accelerate,” the report said.

The foundation said it was concerned that extracting natural gas through a process called fracking — a process of injecting chemicals and fluids at high pressure into rock thousands of feet below the surface — could be damaging ground water in the area further. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is studying the issue.