Chesapeake Chef: Cobia Ceviche

another hub of seafood harvesting in Knapps Narrows but then across the eight-mile-wide mouth of the Choptank River and the four-mile-wide mouth of the Little Choptank. Psychologically, paddling long distances over open water is tough, because the scene changes so slowly and the “road” ahead seems so immense. Paddling choppy water is a continuous balance challenge on both legs. “One mile at a time” will be the 2021 paddlers’ mantra as they make their way down the Taylors Island shoreline to the Campground. On the latter leg, they will pass inside the eroding remains of James Island, which is next on the beneficial use restoration list for the Corps and the port.

TAYLORS ISLAND

29 miles to Crocheron Wharf

This was Chris Hopkinson’s favorite leg last year, working his way down the marshy shoreline into the Honga River. He recalls, “It was so pristine, with entry from Taylors Island and Tar Bay over shoals into the calm of Fishing Creek. It was so natural. The bridge was like a gateway back in time. I worked my way down the Honga to Bishops Head and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Karen Noonan Environmental Education Center, just below Crocheron. The stars in the sky were so bright that night! This event is so different from an Ironman for the scenic quality of the experience, with no paved road. You are part of the environment, with water below, air above, and marshes around. I felt very connected to the Bay.”

Paddling past Rock Hall

CROCHERON WHARF

23 miles to Crisfield

Staying close to shore, especially from the Honga River south, is a lot more visually interesting, especially past marshes and over grass beds. Headed down Tangier Sound from Crocheron,

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Chris pulled up on beaches for brief stops all the way to Cape Charles. For the first half of the trip, in true endurance athlete fashion, he had focused on training and tactics. Now in Tangier Sound, he found he “began to get into the place and the moment. ‘This is spectacular,’ I said to myself. ‘Every crab starts here.’” This is broad, open water, but much of it is shallow, punctuated by a deep channel carved by the Nanticoke River. With the water’s salinity much higher this close to the Atlantic Ocean, the grasses on these flats are a salt-tolerant mixture of eelgrass and widgeongrass, and they are indeed the nursery for most of the Chesapeake’s blue crabs. “I soaked it all in,” Chris continued, “and this year, I really want these folks to soak it in too, the whole way.”

CRISFIELD

24 miles to Harborton

Despite the wonders of Tangier Sound’s shallows, Chris was tired when he reached Crisfield’s Somers Cove last year. His wife, Megan, told him to “just go paddle” the next day. “I knew at that point that I needed to appreciate, to soak in the surroundings,” he said. He got a decent night’s sleep and relaxed as he departed, working down through the Cedar Island Marsh to Pocomoke Sound. “Yeah, this is spectacular,” he said to himself going through Broad Creek. He paused briefly to talk with a waterman fishing crab pots in the Sound’s eelgrass beds and slid past Watts Island, a remote patch of woods and bird habitat between Tangier and Virginia’s Eastern Shore. He saw brown pelicans, bald eagles, and dolphins, paddling “in parts of the Bay most people don’t see.” Day’s end will bring this year’s paddlers to Harborton, in Pungoteague Creek.

HARBORTON

32 miles to Cape Charles public beach

This run from Pungoteague Creek slides past a long stretch of Eastern Shore Bayside beaches, all geologic shock absorbers exposed to the full fetch of cold weather’s northwest winds and waves blowing all the way across the open Chesapeake from the western shore. More tidal creeks cut the shore at intervals, but the 2021 paddlers will have plenty of opportunities to stop, rest, and stretch their legs on solid ground on the way to Cape Charles. They should see more pelicans and dolphins, because this area receives the saltiest water that the tides bring into the Bay’s mouth. It’s a literal “tongue of the ocean” brought on by Coriolis forces from Earth’s rotation.

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Last year, Chris ended his paddle at the Line of Demarcation, the official—if virtual—dividing line between the Chesapeake and the Atlantic. “It was important to me to cross the virtual finish line standing,” he said. He took one last stroke, then dropped backwards into the Atlantic water and floated there with a big smile, as his nearby nautical cheering section let loose. This year’s paddlers will certainly have the right to do the same after their inspiring achievements. Their cheering sections, on site and virtual, will let loose again, in appreciation of both what the paddlers have accomplished and what they have contributed to the Chesapeake through the work of the Oyster Recovery Partnership and Chesapeake Conservancy. 

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CBM Editor at Large John Page Williams is a fishing guide, educator, author, and naturalist, saving the Bay since 1973.