PROTECTING THE BAY, OYSTERS: The influence of a few vocal oyster watermen over the direction of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is getting embarrassing, writes the Bay Journal’s Tom Horton in MarylandReporter.com. Not only has DNR caved in to demands to fire certain respected scientists who have helped protectthe bay and oysters, DNR’s most recent cave-in seemed the worst yet, because the agency opposed carrying out the very science upon which state law requires it to base sustainable management of oysters.
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Rona Kobell of the Bay Journal is reporting that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy acknowledged Wednesday that Pennsylvania had not done enough to control pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, and said that her agency needed to coordinate with agriculture officials to change the course.
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Native Americans around the Chesapeake Bay may have lived hand to mouth in prehistoric times, but they apparently never got so desperate or greedy that they depleted a readily available food source: the estuary’s once-abundant oysters. That’s the upshot of a new study looking at Bay oyster sizes and harvesting activity through the ages, which was published May 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, writes the Bay Journal’s Timothy Wheeler for MarylandReporter.com.