July/ Aug 2020 by Chesapeake Bay Magazine

The Ongoing Search for Authentic Maryland Crab

JULY/AUGUST 2020

In Praise of the Canoe— The Bay’s First Workboat

Poplar Island Terrapins Teach Students a Lesson

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Steamed Blue Crabs seasoned with J.O. No.2 or a custom blend that J.O. manufactured is the flavor people experience at crab establishments all over. Most people credit this crab house seasoning to another product, but J.O. is the crab houses seasoning of choice since 1945. J.O. Spice — started by J.O. Strigle and his wife Dot in Baltimore City in 1945 — is celebrating its 75th Anniversary. A native of Tangier Island, Va., J.O. Strigle brought the seafood spice blend he created in his kitchen on the island to Maryland. Jane McPhaul, J.O.’s daughter, took over operations of the family business in the late eighties while her son, Don Ports, was serving in the Marine Corp. In 1990 Don joined his mother in the family business with a vision to expand. “In the summer of 1991 I met my spice girl, Ginger, with the pick up line you’re destined to be mine; you’re named for a spice,” said J.O. Spice Company president Don Ports to wife Ginger Ports the moment they met. Twenty eight years later, the duo — alongside their children Brittany, Tyler and Bethany — are at the helm of Halethorpe- based J.O. Spice Company. “We can provide crab houses with everything they need for the crab eating experience minus the crabs,” Don says. The company added crab boxes, crab paper, bushel baskets, crab knives, crab mallets and a variety of other items to their offerings. “We purchased our first laser engraver and that opened the door to the retail gift world and personalized options,” Don says. J.O. specializes in custom blended seasonings for pizza companies, pit beef stands, butchers, potato chip companies and more. They are more than seafood seasonings. “My children — the fourth generation — and our amazing team work side by side to make all of this happen,” Ginger says. “At J.O., we are all family who enjoy working with so many other family businesses. We are blessed.” Visit them at jospices.com.

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Volume 50

Number 3

PUBLISHER

John Stefancik

EDITOR IN CHIEF Joe Evans

Managing Editor: Chris Landers Cruising Editor: Jody Argo Schroath News Director: Meg Walburn Viviano Multimedia Journalist: Cheryl Costello Editors at Large: Wendy Mitman Clarke, Chris D. Dollar, Ann Levelle, John Page Williams Contributing Writers: Rafael Alvarez, Laura Boycourt, Larry Chowning, Ann Eichenmuller, Henry Hong, Marty LeGrand, Emmy Nicklin, Tom Price, Nancy Taylor Robson, Karen Soule

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jill BeVier Allen

Contributing Photographers: Andy Anderson, Mark L. Atwater, Skip Brown, André Chung, Dan Duffy, Jay Fleming, Austin Green, Jameson Harrington, Mark Hergan, Jill Jasuta, Vince Lupo, K.B. Moore, Will Parson, Tamzin B. Smith, Chris Witzgall

PRODUCTION MANAGER Patrick Loughrey

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Mike Ogar

ADVERTISING Senior Account Manager Michael Kucera • 804-543-2687 m.kucera@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Senior Account Manager Emily Stevenson • 410-924-0232 emily@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Senior Account Manager Megan Tilley • 919-452-0833 megan@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

Publisher Emeritus Richard J. Royer CHESAPEAKE BAY MEDIA, LLC Chief Executive Officer, John Martino Chief Financial Officer, Rocco Martino Executive Vice President, Tara Davis 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403 410-263-2662 • fax 410-267-6924 ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Editorial: editor@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Circulation: circ@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Billing: billing@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Chesapeake Bay Magazine (ISSN0045-656X) (USPS 531-470) is published by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC, 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. $25.95 per year, 12 issues annually. $7.99 per copy. Periodical postage paid at Annapolis, MD 21403 and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes or corrections for Chesapeake Bay Magazine to 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. Copyright 2020 by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC— Printed in the U.S.A.

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contents On the Cover: Fish Peppers and Snake Oil hot sauce.

CBM

July/August 2020—Volume 50 Number 3

Photo by Cosima Amelang

Features of Black Chesapeake cuisine makes a comeback. Cosima Amelang brings the heat.

Poplar Island Terrapins

A program that unites students and these iconic turtles is an international success story—Steve Nelson and Willem Roosenburg.

Where We’re Headed

Crabeat Emptor Where’s

your crabcake from? The answer is... complicated—Marty LeGrand.

Baltimore

Poplar Island, Md.

Rappahannock River

Fleets Island, Va.

Richmond, Va.

York River

14 69

Go Terps! p. 32

WILL PARSON/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM

Fish Pepper A one-time staple

July/August 2020

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contents

July/August 2020

Columns

Chesapeake Almanac: Not-so Lazy Rivers Capt. John Page Williams

On Boats: The 17-foot Grumman Canoe Capt. John Page Williams sings the

Talk of the Bay

14 18

Chesapeake Stewards Cabin on the Bay

meanders around for a while.

Departments

10 12

praises of a durable classic.

Wild Chesapeake: Hounds & Pompano Capt. Chris D. Dollar looks for

oddball fish, releases the hounds.

Jody’s Log: Boating in a Pandemic

Stern Lines: Best of the Bay Photo Contest Enter your favorite Bay

Capt. Jody Argo Schroath on social distancing during her annual 1,600-mile transit.

From the Editor Online

Advertising Sections

44 77 80 87

Marina Showcase Brokerage Real Estate Marketplace

photos in our 2020 Best of the Bay Photo Contest. Join reader Craig Hastings and this award-worthy Smith Island shot.

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www.chesapeakeyachtclub.org

DISCOVER ANNAPOLIS

300 Years Young Once the nation’s capital where founding fathers met to make peace and draft plans, Annapolis now draws entrepreneurs, artists, and adventurers - from water enthusiasts to history buffs. Its brick lined streets and preserved buildings properly salute the years past and the Midshipmen that still walk among them. From the near shores of the Chesapeake, Annapolis glistens at night and during the day - visitors meander through different shops and galleries, sailors and paddle boarders alike take to the Bay, tables don the street for dining under the stars, cocktails are masterfully crafted, and live music floods through open doors. Come for what is preserved, stay for what is new. Annapolis waits to be discovered.

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from the editor

Shuck Covid by Joe Evans

ay Fleming’s excellent account of the pandemic lockdown effect on the Chesapeake seafood supply chain in our June issue got us thinking about what we could do to brighten up the community experience and enjoy oysters at home while waiting for summer to come. Out of the blue, a note came in from Larry Jennings, a steadfast Coastal Conservation Association member, who was coordinating what was meant to be a modest, Memorial Day weekend order from the Honga Oyster Company based in Toddville, Maryland. The Honga River boys have provided oysters for CCA banquets for a while, and this was a way to support them. The plan was to fetch the shellfish on Friday and eat them over the weekend. The minimum order was a bag of 50 at the wholesale price. On my usual dog-walk, I asked my neighbors if they wanted in, and within the hour had orders for 400. Over the next two days, Jennings had commitments for more than 6,000 and the Honga Oyster crew began harvesting and bagging the bivalves and loading ice-chests for the trip to Annapolis. We picked them up via a no-contact drive-by at Jenning’s driveway and dropped them off around my community on the way back. Everybody was home and waiting, of course. On Saturday, as folks got their oyster knives out and fired up their grills, the texting and posting began, and for the next three days, we were a vibrant, social neighborhood again, celebrating with the definitive Chesapeake morsel, and cold beer. Since you asked: At my house, we immediately shucked a dozen, added dashes of Woodberry Kitchen’s exquisite Snake Oil fish-pepper sauce (snakeoilhotsauce.com), and we

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July/August 2020

slurped. (Read all about fish peppers on page 26.) We rockefellered the next 25 with pepper-jack, spinach, and a garlic-butter/panko crust. We grilled the rest and ate them with a fire-roasted, red-pepper, dipping sauce washed down with Flying Dog brewery’s Bloodline Blood-Orange Ale. The overwhelming consensus was that we should do that again, the very next weekend, perhaps on a smaller scale. Referring to Fleming’s June article and its list of direct, Bay-to-table opportunities, we reached out to Hooper’s Island Oyster Company (hoopersisland.com), which has launched oyster pop-ups and partnerships at the Severna Park Shopping Village; Rosedale Ice in Frederick, Glen Burnie and Baltimore; the Easton Farmer’s Market, and Emily’s Produce in Cambridge. That made the decision easy for a quick trip to Severna Park with a cooler, and we picked up a collectable t-shirt in the bargain. In these times, it’s helpful to recognize and consolidate the good that develops from crisis. Otherwise, it’s just all bad. I see that we are much more interested now in the well-being of others, essentially as their status mirrors our own. In the absence of normal, a new normal develops to engage us, sustain us, and hold us together. Today, we are developing even more enthusiasm and appreciation for community oysters and the folks who provide them. Soon, it will be steamed crabs. Like now, and we’ll persevere and share photos, hot sauce, and well wishes over the fence. joe@chesapeakebaymagazine.com

Get a GEICO quote for your boat and, in just 15 minutes, you’ll know how much you could be saving. If you like what you hear, you can buy your policy right on the spot. Then let us do the rest while you enjoy your free time with peace of mind. geico.com/boat | 1-800-865-4846

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VIDEO: Watch CBM Recreate Sailboat-Charter Boat Collision The hard-to-believe image of this 2018 boat crash leaves us wondering how it could have been avoided. Our experts recreate the nail-biting scene for a Coast Guard video. Watch the video at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/crash. u Read more and sign up for the Bay Bulletin, CBM’s free weekly e-newsletter online at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/baybulletin.

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talk of the bay

Grasses for the Masses volunteers plant submerged aquatic vegetation in support of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s goal of 130,000 acres by 2030.

CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION/CBF.ORG

Chesapeake Stewardship

Learning to be a Bay Activist by Karen Soule

have anchored in the lee of Dobbins Island up the Magothy River on a sweltering summer day and taken refuge up the Piankatank’s Healy Creek for two hurricanes. I have crossed the western branch of the Corrotoman River on the Merry Point Ferry and fished for shad with a member of the Pamunkey Tribe 20 miles from the mouth of the Pamunkey River. I have sailed the length of Chesapeake Bay for more than 20 years, and I thought I knew it pretty well. But it dawned on me that I was taking more from the Bay than I was giving. ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

July/August 2020

Oh sure, I was supporting all those businesses—the boatyards, the restaurants, the stores. I took YMCA kids on boat trips and taught women how to spring a boat off a dock in an onshore breeze. Yet, my get-to-give ratio was out of whack, and I felt uneasy. So, when an email landed in my inbox from Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Volunteers as Chesapeake Stewards (VoiCes) program coordinator Gabby Troutman, I was intrigued. The stewardship curriculum requirements seemed easy enough—six Tuesday evenings of classroom instruction at the Richmond REI store just three miles from home, several field trips, and 40 hours of community service, all for only $25. Piece of cake, especially during the fall and winter. I signed up. The first couple of classes were enlightening. Local experts described how rainwater runoff from impermeable surfaces flushes loads of contaminants into the creeks, which flow into the rivers, which end up in the Bay. We listened to presentations on oyster-bed reclamation projects and planting trees in urban areas. I regained my appreciation for how the Bay was more than a body of water, but that it encompassed every river, creek, pond, and city gutter. Even more motivating were my fellow students. Some liked to boat or fish or owned homes on the water, and all were there with a desire to enhance and preserve their environment, such as Zach, a high school biology teacher who aspires to provide his students a meaningful watershed educational experience. His class was going to build a campus rain garden. And Greg, a retired veterinarian who has sailed extensively in the northern Bay but didn’t see his first dolphin until he moved south and started sailing out of Deltaville, Va. Then there’s Kathleen, a self-described tree-hugger from Brooklyn, NY who

moved to Virginia and became a Master Naturalist. “When did I ever see a tree growing up?” she asked. I know about Master Gardeners. Most neighborhoods have one or two who ensure that there are beautiful shrubs that never die and flower beds that bloom all summer. But I had not heard of Master Naturalists. Turned out that about a third of this class of 30 are Master Naturalists, a designation earned through study, contribution, and stewardship. I felt I needed to up my game. We brainstormed ideas for the 40-hour community service requirement. Some were going to collect oyster shells from restaurants to rebuild oyster beds; others were planting trees to reduce erosion on their lawns. Noble and important efforts, but not for me. I wanting to get in the water, I was thinking... Then, Meredeth Dash, an educator with the Alliance for the Chesapeake, presented a session on CBF’s Grasses for the Masses program whereby volunteers sprout submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) at home and then plant the grasses in the shallows. Dash is also a volunteer CBF Clean Water Captain, teaching about the Bay and how to restore it. For her, the Chesapeake interaction begins in the James River at Richmond. “My husband is an open water swimmer on the James and has raced there for years,” she explains. “I work hard so that he and our two boys can swim and fish in the James for all their lives.” My back-of-hand knowledge couldn’t compare with her years of volunteering, and my commitment pales in comparison to the Chesapeake Bay tattoo on her forearm. Restoring underwater vegetation is critical to improving water quality and fish populations and controlling erosion. We learned that eelgrass grows well in the higher salinity regions of the Bay, but wild celery is more suitable for the lower-salinity

middle and upper portions of the Bay’s rivers and creeks, such as the upper James River. I was eager to start growing my subaquatic celery, and I looked forward to planting my crop in the James near Westover Plantation in May. The Chesapeake Bay Program’s Bay-wide goal is 130,000 acres of SUV by 2030. (In 2017 the Bay SAV score was 100,000 acres.) In a scene resembling an undercover operation, students from the class and other volunteers gathered around Dash’s pick-up truck in the REI parking lot at 9 p.m.. We each collected a large container (think bathtub for a cocker spaniel), growlights, an aquarium heater and a pump, dirt pans (kitty litter boxes), and wild celery seed pods. We were instructed to plant the seeds in the dirt, submerge the pans in water, turn on the pump, heater, and lights, and wait.Later, when my neighbor asked what I was growing in the room over

RESTORATION RESOURCES Virginia Master Naturalist, a community-based natural resources volunteer program— virginiamasternaturalist.org

Maryland Master Naturalist, organized through the University of Maryland Extension, a non-formal education system within the college of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore—extension. umd.edu/masternaturalist.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation— Saving the Bay since 1967—cbf.org

Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, bringing together communities, businesses, and conservationists to improve our lands and waters since 1971—allianceforthe bay.org.

Homegrown wild celery grass sprouts ready for planting.

July/August 2020

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the garage, I answered, “grass.” He didn’t bat an eye. While my seeds and I waited, Troutman organized a group of CBF volunteers to attend Virginia’s Lobby Day on February 20. I had never lobbied a governmental official, so I was grateful to go with experienced volunteers eager to talk to our representatives about Bay legislation such as a proposed five-cent tax on grocery bags to help reduce plastic litter and waste, and the troublesome menhaden catch problem and possible solutions. I learned that every voice counts. At the end of Lobby Day, we slurped local oysters provided by CBF down the hill from the capital. I felt empowered. For the next two months, I nursed my wild celery, changing the water and checking its temperature. But only algae grew. I remembered Dash saying, “It’s an experiment! You never know what will happen.” I even got another set of seeds from Troutman. But nothing sprouted. And then came March and the pandemic, and no one was worrying about wild celery seeds anymore. Troutman emailed the growers to cancel the planting sessions. We dumped our water tubs and dirt boxes and cleaned up the equipment for another try, hopefully next year. I need about 20 more service hours before I can become an authentic Chesapeake Bay Steward. I’ll get there. In the meantime, Dash’s words provide the inspiration and power to the effort: “An activist never gives up the fight. We have to come back even harder next year. Just like the Chesapeake, we have to be resilient.” Karen and David Soule sail out of Fishing Bay Yacht Club in Deltaville, Va.

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The Chesapeake view from the Fleets Island cottage.

It’s What We Do One cottage on the Bay, generations of memories. by Stuart M. Perkins

t’s a rustic, waterfront cottage on a Chesapeake Bay island—Fleets Island, to be precise—where the Rappahannock empties into the Bay. This old cottage is part of an isolated cluster of others, a mile or so off the main road. It’s been added onto over the last sixty or so years and is filled with second-hand furniture, hand-medown linens, and old pots and pans. To do anything from using the stove to turning on the water pump requires knowledge of idiosyncrasies so specific they’re passed down like family history. There’s sand on the floor, salt in the air, and to me, it’s perfect. The actual owner is my uncle, but we in the extended family like to call it “ours”. My uncle and grandfather purchased the overgrown waterfront lot in the late 1950’s, and family members helped clear it to build the original cottage. My great-grandmother even spent time there, so continuing down the line to my own two children, five generations of family have enjoyed good times there. It became, and has remained a fantastic escape for the entire family.

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July/August 2020

Over the years, various combinations of the family have stayed there. By day we swam, played on floats, or walked to the marina, counting ospreys and eagles along the way. At night, we moved beds and arranged cots so that everyone had a place to sleep. Most often, one cousin’s sandy feet were in another cousin’s sunburned face, but no one could have been happier. We were family, and we embraced the unity. It’s what we always did. Long established routines continued, as adults cooked bacon and whispered over coffee so as not to wake the kids. Over the decades, so many in our family watched the same sun rise over the same spot on the same horizon while the same scene of boats pulling in crab pots played out just off the beach. Over time, younger members slept in the same rooms, same beds, and spent days on the same beach as older members, now gone. I hoped that when I had kids, they would appreciate that history and recognize this cottage as the place where most of the people in our huge family had gathered at various points in their lives. I hoped they would “get it”. There was a satisfying comfort in watching simple family patterns repeat as part of the Bay experience. We always stopped at Diggs Seafood in Mattaponi for deviled crabs, a bushel of oysters, or a dozen soft-shelled crabs. Fishing from the jetty and walks to the marina through tangled marsh grass and sun-bleached driftwood were part of us. At the same time every day we’d come in out of the sun for lunch. After time on the beach, we’d all come in for supper. Our parents had done those things, and so had theirs. It’s what we did. Sitting in well-worn lawn chairs under the scant shade of a lone pine near the beach, older family members spoke often of the fun they’d had there. Many of their stories began with “You’re too young to remember but…”

or “Back in the old days…” Their spoken memories became part of our overall experience. And so did rummy. Granddaddy loved to play rummy. He didn’t just enjoy the card game, he was a fiend. From an early age, we were essentially required to learn the game so that he would have someone else to beat. He would play anywhere, and anytime, but relaxing evenings after a day of fishing and swimming were prime rummy times at the bay-house. He played, my parents, aunts, and uncles played, and we cousins learned to play. It was the way. Years later as adults, my sisters and I stayed at the cottage together with our own kids. Decades-old scenarios now played out by our children. They swam with cousins, walked to the marina, and slept on the same sandy cots we’d used as kids. And they learned to play rummy. I found myself saying “You’re too young to remember but…” or “Back in the old days…” I wanted them to learn family things such as—”We buy bait here because Granddaddy always did, we

get groceries from that little store in town because we always have, or after supper we’ll walk to the marina like we always do. Simple familiar patterns were part of the good times. It’s just what we did. One evening after a day of swimming, my kids and I played rummy. We talked about the number of dolphins we’d seen that day, who had found the biggest horseshoe crab, and the other important Bay things. I remembered as a kid having similar conversations with my parents as we shuffled cards after a day in the sun. Simple times spent with family had come to mean so much, and I appreciated and cherished them. But would my own kids feel the same? So many things we did while at the Bay we did just-because everyone had done them for years before us. There was satisfaction in that. Simple, decades-old traditions keep our family history intact. Would my own kids feel that? We continued our rummy game and at one point my son shuffled the

cards and said, “Funny how even if we never play rummy any other time we always play down here at the Bay. Why is that?” My daughter dealt the cards and said nonchalantly without looking up, “It’s what we do.” “Yep.” My son responded casually as he arranged his cards. “We’re awesome.” I never again wondered if they would understand and appreciate the simple but powerful patterns established over decades by a huge, close-knit family. They got it. A year ago, I became a grandfather. A sixth generation will now enjoy that old cottage. The chubby little boy is only a year old and hasn’t been to the Bay yet, but when he goes, I will be the one to take him. Him and a deck of cards. Stuart Perkins is a Richmond native working at Georgetown University. He gardens and he writes recollections of life and growing up in a large southern family.

LEFT: The Perkins family poses between rummy games, 1967 RIGHT: Stuart, Jeff, and Robbie Perkins, 1966.

July/August 2020

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chesapeake almanac Fones Cliffs along the Rappahannock River in Richmond County, Va.

Not-So-Lazy Rivers Meandering along the Chesapeake by Capt. John Page Williams

CHESAPEAKE CONSERVANCY

n August 18, 1608 (according to the calculations of historian Edward Wright Haile), archers of the Rappahannock Tribe began shooting at Captain John Smith and his crew aboard their discovery barge as they made their way up the river. The archers positioned themselves along the towering Fones Cliffs, a long curve in the south bank above today’s town of Tappahannock. According to his own written account, Smith anticipated an attack somewhere along the river and had prepared the boat with shields set along its gunwales, and he steered the boat away from the cliffs toward the marsh on the inside of the curve only to find that several dozen Rappahannock warriors were hiding there to attack. That strategy sounds like a recipe for a Rappahannock victory, but, due to the shields and the width of the river, the arrows fell harmlessly into the water while the assailants jeered at the English for fleeing. Smith and his crew stopped that evening at the friendly town of Pissaseck a few miles upriver on the outside of a curve on the north bank before continuing their exploration upstream to the head of navigation at the site of today’s Fredericksburg. He made peace with the Rappahannock on his return, and the rest, as they say, is history. You can read about the incident in Smith's The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, published in 1624. This skirmish tells a story about how the Chesapeake’s rivers have served humans and the resources that we have depended upon for centuries. Those two looping turns in the Rappahannock are meanders, which are characteristic features of river sections flowing through gently sloping land where gravity’s

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July/August 2020

inexorable force is tempered by obstructions in the river’s bed. Water seeks the path of least resistance, so it will try to flow around any obstruction, which creates a dynamic struggle between flow and resistance from the mud, sand, gravel, rock, natural debris, and man-made structures such as wharves in the river’s bed. This dynamic tends to form repeating curves in which accelerated flow along the outside erodes the waterway’s bed and bank while the slower flow on the inside allows sediment to settle. The result tends to be deeper water and fast (solid) land on the outside of the curve, with shallow water and soggy, lowland marsh or swamp on the inside. At the next obstruction, the process repeats. For the Native people of the Chesapeake, the meanders offered advantages for settlement. On the outsides of the curves they found good soil for growing squash, beans, and corn. Woodlands provided wild game to hunt, nuts to gather, and material to build canoes and houses. Bluffs offered vantage points where lookouts could observe river travelers, and the ravines between ridges often exposed freshwater springs. The rivers also offered a wide range of seasonal and resident fish, while the opposing marshes and swamps attracted waterfowl furbearers, and edible wild plants. The Native people saw their rivers as uniting, not separating, the two shores. Captain Smith marked many of these towns in his map of 1612 along the outside of the river meanders on the James and Chickahominy to the Patuxent on the Western Shore and the Pocomoke and Nanticoke to the Sassafras on the Eastern Shore. Transitions came to those meanders through the second half

of the seventeenth century. It’s not entirely a pretty story. Those town sites proved useful to the English especially as the tobacco trade flourished. In the 1650s, some of the immigrants had settled around Pissaseck, and by 1678, all of the town’s Indians had moved away, not necessarily voluntarily. In that year, Edward Bray built a brick church there along with an ordinary, a ferry, and a wharf for shipping products to England. The site became Leedstown, and it still has a wharf, which serves the tour boat Captain Thomas (Chesapeake & Tangier Cruises) and the nearby Ingleside Plantation Winery. Similar stories played out up and down the Chesapeake’s rivers, and many town sites retained their native names. Some of those meander towns flourished as their rivers formed

infrastructure for regional and international commerce. The nineteenth century brought steamboats, which provided regular service for freight and passengers connecting rural communities with urban markets such as Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Hampton Roads. The skill of the steamboat captains was marvelous as they negotiated the winding channels and powerful currents. Their navigation skills were only surpassed by those of the schooner, bugeye, and pungy skippers who negotiated the rivers under sail. One of my most treasured Bay friendships was with the late Clyde Watson, a farmer, riverman, and community leader whose life spanned the twentieth century at Magruder’s Landing on the Patuxent River near Brandywine, Maryland. His father was

GAMING, GRUBBING & MOVIE-GOING!

the steamboat agent for that wharf, and Clyde worked there as a boy. Like the Native Patuxent people before him, he saw the river as the essential connection between the wharf where he moored his workboat to the marsh on the inside of the curve where he hunted, trapped, and fished. It even allowed him to court his eventual wife with that workboat where she lived at Lower Marlboro on the opposite shore. Over centuries of flow, this dynamic system continues to cause curves to grow sharper and extend deeper into the land in water’s constant attempt to find its way to the Chesapeake. In time, the curves may grow so sharp that the necks of land between them become very narrow. Native people on the James were mystified in April of 1607 to see captains Newport and Smith and their

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crews struggle up the James River meanders under sail and oar when all the Indians had to do to keep up with the strangers was to walk the trail through the woods on say, Curles Neck. Sometimes, the force of a sudden flood from a major storm will cause a river to jump a neck and cut a shortcut through the base of the meander, creating an oxbow in the channel. Shortcuts also come from industrious humans. The James has three dredged cutoffs that shorten a ship’s run to Richmond’s Intermediate Terminal. The first (Dutch Gap) was cut in 1862. Today, Chesapeake’s river meanders provide deep channels for tugs pushing barges with everything from feed corn and soybeans to fuel-oil, sand, and gravel. The skills of the tug skippers are amazing as they negotiate tortuous bends such as the one under the Nanticoke’s Route-50 bridge at Vienna. A few watermen still work fyke and pound nets in the upper rivers for crabs, perch, and catfish. And then, there are folks like us who have developed a fondness for these meandering waterways for birding (especially great blue herons, bald eagles, ospreys, waterfowl, and prothonotary warblers), fishing (white perch, largemouth bass, crappie, catfish, and shad), hunting (waterfowl), and recreation aboard canoes, kayaks, skiffs, bass boats, and pontoon boats. Marinas are scarce in these sections of the Bay’s rivers, but Maryland and Virginia have done a good job of providing boat ramps and other access points; you guessed it— mostly on the outsides of the meanders at sites where ancient towns appear on Smith’s map. CBM Editor at Large John Page Williams is a fishing guide, educator, author, and naturalist, saving the Bay since 1973.

on boats

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Grumman canoes have been in production since 1945, first by Grumman Aircraft and later by

The Indominable Paddler What can‘t you do with a 17-foot Grumman canoe? by Capt. John Page Williams

or the best part of ten years, my office was the stern seat of a 17-foot Grumman canoe—my Marsh Arab. Over the course of Chesapeake Bay Foundation field trips for school students and families in the 1970s and early ‘80s, I paddled her 3,000 miles or more around the Chesapeake’s tidal tributaries in the company of eight of her sisters and their occupants, and she has taken me fishing countless times since. Please forgive me if I sound dogmatic, but those experiences have given me a deep appreciation for these able, endlessly versatile boats. There are good reasons why the indigenous American canoe has endured for millennia, and why CBF and other conservation, Scout, and state park systems have continued with thousands of canoe-based field trips all over the Chesapeake watershed for nearly half-a-century. First off, let me admit that a 17-foot Grumman canoe has all of the aesthetic appeal of the old Ford pickup truck that I used to tow CBF’s canoe fleet around the region. The boat is aluminum and noisy, but it is durable, stable, and seaworthy with a blend of acceptable speed and substantial load capacity. The latter is no accident. In 1947, Grumman Aircraft engineer John Achlich, modeled the 17-footer after an early Twentieth Century, E.M. White-designed, wood-andcanvas, guide canoe that was known for its broad usefulness, with allowances for the limitations imposed by the process of stretch-forming aluminum. I’m still paddling Marsh Arab simply because she does what I need her to do, and she’s virtually indestructible. Other paddling designs, concepts, brands, and materials offer advantages in maneuverability, quietness, speed, looks, and abilities, but the utility of the open

canoe endures. Over the past thirty years, kayaks of widely varying hull shapes have become more popular than canoes for casual paddling and fishing as getting around with a double-blade paddle is more intuitive than learning to use a single-blade. A single blade paddle causes the canoe to turn as well as move forward. The key is realizing that it’s a multi-faceted tool designed to move water in multiple directions, depending on how we manipulate it. Learning to keep a canoe moving in a straight line, and to turn when and where you want, is not rocket science. We’ve taught thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds to do it, and there are many ways to get good instruction online and on the water. Moreover, open canoes are generally more stable than kayaks and lend themselves well to paddling with family, friends, gear, and even dogs. They evolved as general utility vessels that worked for a living. That utility is what has made them so successful for teaching Bay ecology and natural history on appropriate parts of the Chesapeake’s rivers and creeks. Consider what we’ve done with them. This list is not complete, because field educators at CBF and other organizations are constantly developing new ways to teach with them, but it reflects some of the ways I’ve used the boats to give students of all-ages good days on the water. First, paddling a canoe brings a Zen sort of satisfaction. I remember the look on my daughter's face the first time she realized as a child that she could make Marsh Arab move with a small paddle that an uncle had made for her. Even that big old hull slides along in a most pleasing way. Second,

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GRUMMAN

O.M.C. and now the Marathon Boat Group.

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on boats

the pace teaches the value of speed, and the lack of it, in paying attention to a waterway. It’s akin to taking a hike instead of riding a bicycle or a motorized vehicle. A couple of miles on a tidal creek such as Kings Creek on Maryland's Choptank River or Gordons Creek on Virginia’s Chickahominy offer all sorts of coves and side branches to explore, plus current eddies, trees, marshes, birds, fish, and other critters to look at and ponder. John McPhee notes in The Survival of the Bark Canoe— “A canoe trip has become simply a rite of oneness with certain terrain, a diversion of the field, an act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself.” Early on in her career, Marsh Arab acquired a portable sonar unit that helped teach us to visualize those creeks and rivers in three dimensions.

It showed us fish and taught valuable lessons in how downstream flow and tides shape streams as they move sand, gravel, and mud around, and how those forces create habitat for plants and animals. With care in calm conditions, I could stand in Marsh Arab and throw a small cast net into some of those places. With the ease of beaching, the canoes allowed us to use minnow seines to discover what lived along the shores. We caught bull minnows, silversides, baby rockfish, largemouth bass, catfish, and even perfectlyformed baby red drum on one occasion at the Hole in the Wall fishing grounds near Gwynns Island, Virginia. Marsh Arab carried a minnow seine with nine-foot poles, a large first aid kit, a dry-bag of spare clothes, and towels for the occasional student capsize (life-jacket wearing was/is

mandatory), extra paddles, and lunch, which generally meant a picnic on a beach or in a patch of woods. Landing for lunch allowed for repeat lessons in climbing out safely by taking advantage of the canoe's inherent stability. Student lunches did, however, sometimes produce sugar-highs that made a few forget the landing practices they had just learned, resulting in the occasional, minor spill on departure. Fortunately, a canoe’s inherent portability make it easy to empty a partially capsized boat and continue quickly with the day’s itinerary. Cold weather in spring and fall engendered more care, even in the face of excessive M&Ms. On multi-day trips in summer, we had opportunities to cover more water and teach advanced canoe-handling skills. Once our clients became comfortable with steering, it was

possible to coach them into synchronizing bow and stern strokes. Rowing crews call this “catching the swing”, and it takes amazing coordination in an eight-person shell. In a canoe, it’s much easier, and it results in remarkably improved efficiency that enhances the Zen. We taught old-style long strokes taking advantage of leverage with arms, shoulders, and backs using paddles longer than those that are in vogue today. I used a six-foot Maine guide’s paddle made of springy ash wood with a broad blade, which gave me tremendous leverage for moving water to herd and help my charges as necessary. Another seemingly unorthodox tool that became standard equipment for CBF trip leaders was a doublebladed paddle sized for canoeing. Mine are nine-feet long. If a 17-foot Grumman is like a water-borne pickup truck, adding a double-blade is like dropping a diesel engine under the hood, especially when paddling solo. Using the same sort of classic leverage principles, speed under the doubleblade comes close to that of a strong tandem crew, which made the device invaluable in cases where I had to go solo. In addition to speed, it also provides great control on windy days. I really enjoy paddling Marsh Arab with a double-blade, and I don’t understand why more people don’t use one. They were standard issue for canoeists in some parts of our country a century ago. Yup, I love canoes. I submit that these classics are under-rated as proper boats for exploring much of the Chesapeake. CBM Editor at Large John Page Williams is a fishing guide, educator, author, and naturalist, saving the Bay since 1973. In 2013, the state of Maryland proclaimed him to be an Admiral of the Bay.

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The Chesapeake chili makes a comeback.

by Cosima Amelang 26

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July/August 2020

Though it’s possible it made it onto a ship by accident, it’s easy to imagine how the fish pepper, with its beautiful, variegated leaves, would have stood out as a plant worth packing. Michael Twitty, culinary historian and author of the James Beard Award-winning book, The Cooking Gene, says there’s a good chance it was brought to the Chesapeake by Haitians around the time of the island’s revolution and soon appeared in kitchens as the immigrants went on to run Baltimore’s produce markets. By the 1870s, the fish pepper was well established in African American home gardens throughout the Mid-Atlantic. As Twitty says, “People grew many different types of hot peppers in their yards, and for Black people in particular, it was not an option. It was a necessity.” Chilis like the fish pepper had deep ties to folklore and medicine; the fact that they made food sing was a bonus. Peppers were used to ease joint pain, get rid of digestive worms, and deter bugs from tobacco plants. Enslaved people seeking freedom would rub them on their feet, hoping to throw off the bloodhounds on their trails. The home garden was also a powerful tool for making a better life. On plantations, vegetable patches were a way for the enslaved to earn money and maybe even freedom by selling produce to slaveholders. Heirloom plants like the fish pepper were at the heart of truck farming, a lifeline, especially for the large free Black population in the Baltimore area before the Civil War. As it grew, this network of growers and sellers became intertwined with a flourishing catering industry rooted in fresh local seafood and managed by family dynasties extending from Baltimore to Philadelphia. The food coming from these kitchens was part of a vibrant Chesapeake cuisine that had evolved for years, guided by the ingenuity of the enslaved. Afro-Caribbean ingredients like the fish pepper combined with European and Native American traditions as cooks drew from one of

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BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS/RARESEEDS.COM

eafood is the stuff of the Chesapeake soul. As the Bay reaches back into the coastline, almost splitting the states in two, it has given Maryland and Virginia edible identities of blue crabs and bivalves—so much so, that a crustacean makes an appearance on my Maryland driver’s license, as integral a part of my personal records as my address and eye color. But over the past decade, a little hot pepper has discreetly emerged from near disappearance to become a new ambassador of Chesapeake history. In the 1800s, home gardens in Baltimore’s African American community were brought to life with splashes of color—streaks of lime, burnt orange, and flame-red dangling from green- and white-splotched leaves—the fish pepper plant. Long before Old Bay became Baltimore’s trademark spice, the pepper lent its heat to seafood dishes that made the Chesapeake home to one of the world's great cuisines. The symbiotic relationship between the fish pepper and local seafood eateries is what gave the plant its name. Before transitioning through a spectrum of bright colors, the chili starts off as a light-white pod, an effect from its recessive albino gene. Harvested at this mild, early stage, it added an invisible kick to cream-based seafood sauces and soup—the ultimate secret ingredient. Try fish pepper sauce on an oyster, and the name will make even more sense. The chili’s heat and fruity flavor is a perfect complement to briny Bay offerings. But how the pepper landed in the MidAtlantic is hard to pin down. No doubt, it was swept up in the sprawling trade networks between Africa, Europe, and the Americas leading up to the 1800s. Hot peppers originating from Mexico drifted to the Caribbean, where they were adopted by enslaved Africans and continued to migrate outwards in all directions.

BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS/RARESEEDS.COM

Fish peppers in all their glory.

the most fertile ecosystems on Earth. “The Chesapeake was the first major place of this triple Creole heritage,” says Twitty—a century ahead of legendary New Orleans, fifty years ahead of Charleston. Cookbooks like Elizabeth Lea’s Domestic Cookery (1851), Mrs. Benjamin Otis Howard’s Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen (1873) and Harry Franklyn Hall’s 300 Ways to Cook and Serve Shellfish (1901) are a window into this world, featuring recipes like crab gumbo with okra, terrapin stew, and Baltimore oyster pie. Hall, a Black caterer from Philadelphia, calls for hot peppers in many of his recipes, but doesn’t specify the variety. In fact, the fish pepper actually isn’t named in any cookbooks of the time. It remained part of oral traditions, cradled by the Black community as its own. The port city of Baltimore was the core of this thriving Chesapeake food culture, with

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July/August 2020

lively public markets and emerging ethnic neighborhoods. (Baltimore was second only to New York for the numbers of immigrants it welcomed through its port in the 1800s). It’s said that Ralph Waldo Emerson declared the city’s celebrated Lexington Market to be “the gastronomic capital of the world." At that time, up to 50,000 people would pass through the market on a single day. But the scene went from bustling to bust as the waters of the Chesapeake suffered from overfishing and pollution towards the middle of the 20th century, shutting down many of the seafood houses lining the Bay. As cities grew denser and home gardens lost ground, the fish pepper fell into obscurity, gradually disappearing from menus. That is, until William Woys Weaver stumbled upon some baby food jars stashed in his grandfather’s freezer. The jars held seeds of

beautiful heritage plants, collected with an artist’s eye. Horace Pippin, a well-known Black painter in the Philadelphia area, had given them to Weaver’s grandfather in the 1940’s. Pippin suffered from injuries he sustained in World War I and turned to Weaver, a beekeeper, for relief, trading selections from his seed collection for honeybee stings that would ease his pain. One of these seeds was the fish pepper, and, in 1995, grandson Weaver shared them with the non-profit Seed Savers Exchange organization (seedsaver.org), bringing Pippin’s treasures into wider circulation. The chili began floating around again as contemporary chefs in the Mid-Atlantic region turned to local heritage plants for inspiration. Chief among them is Spike Gjerde, James Beard-Award-winning chef of Woodberry Kitchen, a Baltimore restaurant that sources food entirely from local growers. He learned of the fish pepper from Fighting Old Nep, a pamphlet about the foodways of enslaved Marylanders self-published by Twitty in 2006. “I look to the past for clues as to how we can be doing this thing that we do with local food,” Gjerde says. “The fact that there was a pepper that was grown around the Chesapeake that Baltimore's Lexington Market played a role in at the turn of the 19th century cooking here was one where you could buy flowers, pineapples, fresh produce, and, of those clues.” no doubt, fish peppers. Gjerde was looking for a way to create a hot sauce that the Chesapeake could call its own, the way Tabasco is associated with Louisiana. “When the fish pepper came along, that’s when it clicked.” To source the pepper, he built relationships with local growers like Denzel Mitchell, who started off with 15 fish pepper plants on a vacant lot in Baltimore. (Mitchell LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Between the lines of 19th Century Chesapeake cookbooks might be the ghosts of fish peppers— the secret ingredient of an heirloom cuisine.

July/August 2020

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TRUELOVE SEEDS

Soilful City collaborates with Black farmers and urban gardeners from DC and Maryland to preserve and distribute fish pepper seeds and to create Pippin Sauce, which pays homage to seed-keeping, DC culture, and the late artist Horace Pippin. The sauce is available seasonally in late summer while it lasts at trueloveseeds.com and select markets.

has since become deputy director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, an urban farming collective dedicated to resource-sharing and advocacy.) As Gjerde encouraged farmers to grow the pepper, a small handful the first year turned into a few bushels the next and eventually thousands of bottles of Snake Oil, a hot sauce now on every table at Woodberry Kitchen and sold online—snakeoilhotsauce.com. The restaurant has also branched out to make a fish pepper-flake dry seasoning made from the pepper mash left over from fermenting Snake Oil. And the chili continues to pop up all over the menu, like a regional seal of approval, a through-line of flavor in dishes such as Tilghman Island Crab Pot, deviled eggs, and brussels sprouts with fish pepper honey and benne. Xavier Brown, a D.C.-based urban farmer and founder of Soilful City, collaborates with other Black farmers in the area to grow fish peppers and makes a version of chili sauce he calls Pippin Sauce (available at Good Food Markets and Glen’s Garden Market in D.C.). It was the pepper’s layered stories that first spoke

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July/August 2020

to Brown. “Growing up in D.C., it’s not too often that you’re able to get seeds that you can be directly tied to,” he says. “The fish pepper has opened my eyes to building up my own seed stock and wanting to grow more plants and get to that point of other people doing that as well, so we can trade, we can share, and there can be an abundance of seeds.” (Seeds from Soilful City’s fish pepper stock are available at trueloveseeds.com). As people carve out more green space in cities, the pepper has become a part of an urban gardening renaissance, especially among Black growers who can connect to the pepper’s history. It’s a symbol of self-reliance, offering an opportunity to build a sense of identity, in addition to a business. “Definitely with descendants of the African Diaspora, there’s unresolved trauma with the land, our connection to it, our relationship to it,” Brown says. “Being able to reclaim our history and retell our narratives on our own terms, I think there’s a lot of healing in that.” The pepper, and the stories it tells, are spreading throughout Baltimore, D.C., and down the Bay even to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The plants thrive in the hot, humid Chesapeake summer, and they also grow well in containers. They're now included in the SlowFood.org Ark of Taste, an international catalog listing heritage plants at risk of being endangered. More farms are planting the pepper to supply local restaurants, including

The pepper emerges as a creamy, white fruit with a mild flavor. As the pepper matures, it gains spiciness and takes on light-green stripes, which darken and then turns orange with dark brown striations. It reaches full maturity as a solid red pepper, about as hot as a jalapeño or mild cayenne (5,000 to 30,000 on the Scoville heat scale), and much less intense than a habanero. Fish peppers are an excellent way to liven up seafood dishes. Cut one in half and throw it in a stew. Chop it up finely to give extra zing to a crab cake. Chef Gjerde even suggests treating it as you would a Szechuan pepper, using it whole in a stir-fry. The fish pepper lends itself especially well to preserving. Try pickling or making your own pepper vinegar by pouring vinegar over the them in a bottle. The thin membrane makes it a great candidate for drying as well. Thread the peppers on a string to bring some of the beauty of the garden inside to dry.

Woodberry Kitchen's fish-pepper Snake Oil, ready for action in Baltimore.

sixth generation Baywater Farms, which works with Heirloom restaurant in Lewes, Delaware. Through school-garden initiatives in area public schools, the chili gives students handson history and gardening lessons. It’s become an important part of local community garden outreach, such as Soilful City’s work to engage formerly incarcerated individuals in urban farming. Museums are also incorporating the fish pepper into the wider historical narrative. It’s featured in the gardens at Colonial Williamsburg and Monticello as well as the Victory Garden at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History where it’s been growing for over ten years. Highlighting the role of the home garden in American history, the Victory Garden welcomes visitors from all over the world as they walk down the National Mall. Smithsonian horticulturalist Erin Clark says their vegetables usually change each year, but the fish pepper is a constant. “People always talk about it. It’s very popular on our tours,” she says. “It’s a great tool for education because it teaches people about the needs of people that came before. People always connect around food stories and plant stories.” Over the past decade, the charismatic fish pepper has proven it’s not just a flavor of the month. It’s becoming a key ingredient in the Chesapeake kitchen, helping the region reclaim the recognition it deserves. It’s a driving force in the local urban gardening movement and a link between chefs and growers working to create a sustainable food system. It’s a tool for educating children and adults about history and the importance of saving heritage seeds. And, it’s a testament to the people who have kept its flavor alive throughout the centuries. “This is the actual, physical, moving, organic evidence of our presence,” says Twitty. “It’s part of who I am, part of who we are.” h Cosima Amelang is a video producer/editor, food blogger, and cook from Bethesda, Md. When she's not rolling out pasta dough, she's usually dancing flamenco. July/August 2020

ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

Po p l a r I s l a n d T

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July/August 2020

R E S E A R C H A N D E D U C AT I O N T E A M U P F O R CO N S E R VAT I O N

n this dog day in August, noted turtle biologist Dr. Willem Roosenburg prowls the Poplar Island beaches looking for quartersize, diamond back terrapin hatchlings emerging after incubating in the warm sand for 60 days. These lucky hatchlings will see their first light at the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project on this small island in the middle of the Bay, a terrapin sweet spot of restored wetlands and sandy beaches. This is ideal turtle nesting habitat without the fox and racoon predators found on the mainland. In addition to providing research opportunities, abundant hatchlings enable Roosenburg and his colleagues to support educational programs that use terrapins to teach environmental awareness and literacy. Each year, Roosenburg and his research team capture about 800 hatchlings and send 160 to 200 of them to Maryland classrooms to be raised over the winter. Thereby, research and education complement each other and work together as a conservation strategy for Maryland’s iconic reptile.

Every summer since 2002, Roosenburg has led an Ohio University research team to Poplar Island to collect hatchlings and mark terrapin nests with pink flags along the shore. Nests usually contain about 13 eggs buried six inches in the sand. Egg depth and temperature determine the sex of adult turtles. The absence of major mammalian predators on the remote island provides unique opportunities to study terrapin nesting habits without the nest destruction caused by predators. Over the summer, scientists capture, mark, release, and recapture terrapins to better understand their life cycle. The research has provided some interesting insights. For example, Poplar Island hatchling survival rates greatly exceed those found on the nearby mainland despite the many herons, egrets, and gulls that gobble small terrapins like potato chips. Researchers also discovered that about 30 percent of juvenile terrapins overwinter in their nests and wait to emerge the following spring. In the absence of foxes and racoons, novel predators such as snakes and mice prey on terrapin eggs.

By S t e v e N e l s o n & W i l l e m R o o s e n b u r g

July/August 2020

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WILL PARSON/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM

DIAMOND RESEARCH

WILL PARSON/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM

ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION

Juvenile diamondback terrapins hatched on Poplar Island await transport to area classrooms.

TU RTLES I N CLASS Beyond his research work, Roosenburg partners with Maryland schoolteachers through a program sponsored by the Maryland Department of Transportation Maryland Port Administration (MDOT MPA), administered by Maryland Environmental Service (MES), whereby school children learn that so-called “head-start” hatchlings raised in warm classrooms grow faster than their natural cohort, which hibernates through the Bay winter. Because head-starts grow faster than wild terrapins, they may present an effective strategy for turtle conservation. Perhaps more importantly, female head-starts tend to nest two years earlier than their wild counterparts. This earlier reproduction may accelerate terrapin population growth around Poplar Island. Researchers now witness head-start terrapins returning to the island to dig their own nests. Because Poplar Island produces such a large number of hatchlings each year, scientists continue to collect data and compare life cycles of head-starts versus wild hatchlings. The head-start program also allows school children to make important contributions to terrapin research that may someday guide the way for turtle conservation and inspire future scientists.

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July/August 2020

In 1847, Poplar Island spread across more than 1,000 acres. In the early 1900s, it supported a thriving community of about 100 people with several farms, a school, church, post office, and a sawmill. Later, the island served as a retreat for Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Subsequently, erosion and subsidence washed away most of the island, and by 1996, only five acres remained on four remnant islands. In 1998, the US Army Corps of Engineers and MDOT MPA formed a partnership to rebuild the island and restore salt marshes using dredged material from the approach channel to the Port of Baltimore. The project continues apace and will create approximately 50 percent of the restored island as spartina salt-marsh and the remainder as uplands, including forests, meadows, freshwater wetlands, and scrub-shrub habitat. Construction of the first perimeter dike began in 1998 and was completed by 2002. A major project expansion is currently underway on the north end. Originally, engineers planned restored habitat mainly for black ducks, herons, ibis, and egrets. Today, the island hosts over 200 bird species. Terrapins serendipitously came ashore in 2002, and their numbers have continued to grow. The dredge-and-fill project will continue until 2044, when Poplar Island will have received 68 million cubic yards of dredged shipping channel material. The restored island will add 776 acres of tidal wetlands and 829 acres of upland forest habitat within Chesapeake Bay.

BACK TO SCHOOL At the National Aquarium in Baltimore, educational specialist Andrew Walker meets teachers selected for the Terrapins in the Classroom program. On this September night, after Roosenburg describes terrapin biology to the assembled teachers, Walker reviews instructions and provides tips for raising happy turtles. He then leads the group to the lab to receive the wiggling baby terrapins in their waiting buckets. This year, the National

counties and Baltimore City. Some of them travel long distances to attend trainings and receive hatchlings. “We support our teachers, but we also ask a lot of from them,” he says. Terrapins in the Classroom is one of many National Aquarium programs that provide unique, hands-on opportunities for students to form meaningful connections to the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. It joins the Terrapin Education and Research Partnership (TERP) sponsored by MDOT MPA in a common goal to inspire the next generation of conservationists based on a belief that education leads to inspiration and conservation. Walker sees the inspiration develop. “It’s amazing to see how teachers and students connect to their terrapins in such a short amount of time,” he says. “Release day is always exciting, but also emotional as the students say goodbye to their terrapins.”

WILL PARSON/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM

Aquarium selected 42 Maryland schools from among many applicants to raise Poplar Island’s summer hatchling crop. Teachers and students will care for them over the school year and return them to Poplar Island the following spring. While teachers present textbook lessons, students learn about terrapins by feeding, caring, and measuring them. Similar programs operate at Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center for Anne Arundel County and Maryland Environmental Services on the Eastern Shore. Together, they have released over 2600 terrapins since 2005. Although Andrew likes to watch and handle the juvenile terrapins, he most enjoys working with teachers. “Our teachers are an absolute inspiration,” he says. “In addition to shaping young minds, they bring a joy and passion that I find truly impressive.” He notes that selected classrooms represent 12 Maryland

Pink flags mark terrapin nest locations on Poplar Island.

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MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE

Easton High School students raised diamondback terrapin hatchlings throughout the school year and released them on Poplar Island in the spring.

LETTI NG GO On release day in the spring, many students will take their first trip ever over the Bay Bridge followed by a 30-minute boat ride from Tilghman Island aboard Maryland's Poplar Island work-vessel, the Terrapin. Students tour the island and listen to presentations about salt marsh ecology, the beneficial use of dredged material, and terrapin natural history. They observe active construction operations and find pink flags marking terrapin nests growing next year’s crop of hatchlings. The trip culminates with students walking to the edge of the salt marsh in one of Poplar Island’s wetland cells and releasing their terrapins.

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July/August 2020

Prior to the release, veterinarians inspect the turtles to ensure their health and readiness. Then, scientists mark them with a microchipPIT-tag (Passive Integrated Transponder) to enable later identification. Roosenburg and his field crew use nets and traps to capture terrapins throughout the summer, and they track head-starts along with their wild counterparts. Researchers post head-start recaptures to social media on the day of capture so that teachers and students can learn the status of those that were in their charge. Several have been recaptured more than ten years after their releases. Others have dispersed from the island and relocated to Tilghman Island or other nearby shores.

The Poplar Island restoration project has become an international success story. Experts from around the world come to see how this a collaboration uses dredge material to restore valuable tidal habitat. For Maryland, it is a win-win for the environment and the economy. Chesapeake Bay’s native species benefit from the restoration of tidal wetland habitat, and maintenance dredging of the Bay’s shipping channels keeps the keels of commerce moving safely into the Port of Baltimore. The project maintains a public outreach effort to explain the benefits to the Bay community. In addition to education programs, the partnership hosts community events and conducts Poplar Island tours aboard the Terrapin, which leaves daily between March and October from the MES pier on Tilghman Island. For more details on the project and to register for a tour visit poplarislandrestoration.com or email poplartours@menv. com. Poplar Island terrapin restoration represents a hardearned victory for Chesapeake Bay conservation. Despite increasing

numbers of Poplar Island terrapins, other populations throughout the Bay continue to decline. Expanding urban and suburban development destroys beach habitat and brings uncontrolled mammalian predators, while other terrapins get crushed on highways or drown in crab pots. Managers can use the knowledge gained from Poplar Island research to restore terrapin populations throughout the Bay. In the meantime, the project demonstrates how effective management, science, and citizen involvement can work together to protect Maryland’s state reptile. h Steve Nelson is an estuarine ecologist with over 25 years of experience in the Chesapeake Bay and various U.S. and international programs. He is a fisheries consultant and explorer based in Baltimore. Dr. Willem Roosenburg is a professor of biological sciences at Ohio University, and co-edited and co-authored several chapters in the recently published Ecology and Conservation of the Diamond-Backed Terrapin.

Hillsmere Elementary students and teachers prepare to release "Simba" into a Poplar Island wetland habitat.

CYNTHIA MITCHELL /U.S. ARMY PHOTO

CON SE RVATION AN D COM M E RCE

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Crabeat Emptor The provenance of a crab cake

story by Marty LeGrand & photos by Jay Fleming 38

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July/August 2020

y anyone’s measure, the highest honor you can bestow a crab cake is to label it “Maryland.” The entire nation recognizes the imprimatur. Some crab cakes are exceptionally unworthy imitations, larded with filler and practically marinated in Old Bay. But you can find what purports to be the genuine article almost anywhere—at a trendy mid-town Manhattan oyster bar, an upscale seafood restaurant in Chicago, even culinary hotspots in Napa Valley, where Maryland crab is offered alongside the West Coast’s beloved Dungeness crab. Now that crab season is upon us, countless jumbolump orbs of the Chesapeake’s iconic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, will be served in restaurants, crab houses, dock bars and seafood stalls throughout the crustacean’s native watershed. Some crab cakes will contain all Bay-caught crabmeat. Most won’t. The truth of the local seafood economy is that, for a number of reasons, the main ingredient in crab cakes sold at Chesapeake Bay restaurants generally isn’t from here. Some meat isn’t even the same species of crab, especially seafood that’s imported from Asia. “Probably seventy to ninety percent of the crab cakes sold here in Maryland, the meat is not from the Chesapeake,” according to chef John Shields, the dean of Chesapeake Bay cuisine and noted cookbook author. “The percentage of crab that comes from the Chesapeake is really low because there’s just not enough crab. Not only is there not enough crab because it’s sought after, but it has a higher price, too.” Restaurants fortunate enough to obtain a steady supply of Bay crabmeat from local processors, including Shields’s acclaimed Gertrude’s in Baltimore, generally pay 20 to 25 percent more for the product than they would for imported crabmeat. And they charge customers accordingly. The guiding principle for crab cake eaters seeking genuine local crab has been buyer be wary. Price is one tipoff; if it seems suspiciously low, the star of your meal probably wasn’t caught anywhere near here. Nor can consumers always trust the menu. A much-publicized 2015 report by the environmental group Oceana found

that 38 percent of the crab cakes marketed in Maryland and Washington D.C. as locally sourced blue crab contained imported species instead. Subsequent, more precise genetic testing by government and Oceana scientists indicated the actual percentage of mislabeled crabmeat is probably higher. Turns out Oceana’s seafood sleuths gave some crab cakes indigenous status that wasn’t warranted. “Of the correctly labeled blue crabs that we found [in 2015], maybe one third of those likely came from South America,” says Kimberly Warner, an Oceana senior scientist who participated in the original investigation and broader follow-up DNA testing that included preserved specimens from Oceana’s initial study. That doesn’t mean the 86 restaurants included in Oceana’s survey knowingly mislabeled their crab cakes. Some may have purchased crabmeat falsely labeled earlier in the supply chain. Some mixed Bay crabmeat with less expensive imported crab to economize or to augment the scarcity of local crabmeat during the off-season. Before confronting your server in a huff over a $30 maybe-or-maybe-not Bay crab cake, it helps to understand the object of your gustatory affection and the dynamics of the crab market.

As with the Champagne region of France, there's only one place to get Maryland crab meat.

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Baltimore restaurateur, author, and crabcake enthusiast John Shields—from the cover of Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.

JED KIRSCHBAUM

lue crabs are synonymous with Chesapeake Bay, but Callinectes sapidus swims the Atlantic Ocean from New England to northern Argentina as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The United States accounts for approximately 75 percent of the species’ global harvest; about 35 percent of the domestic total comes from Chesapeake Bay, which once supplied 50 percent. H.L. Mencken’s 64,000-square-mile protein factory has slowed but certainly not ceased production since his day. In 2018, about 55 million pounds of crabs were commercially harvested Bay-wide, according to the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee’s annual report, a slight increase from the 54 million pounds harvested the previous year. Louisiana and North Carolina trail Maryland and Virginia among the nation’s top commercial crab-harvesting states. Bay crabs are a particularly prized cohort of their species. Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood guide for consumers, rates Maryland blue crabs highly for quality and for minimizing bycatch. Crabs caught with trotlines in the state are a Seafood Watch “Best Choice” and those caught in pots are a “Good Alternative.” (The group rates Virginia-caught crabs less favorably, placing them on the “Avoid” list due to a lack of crab-pot, turtle-exclusion device regulations.) Chefs and seafood lovers favor Chesapeake crabs because they lead a savory life. Bay crabs hibernate in the winter, storing flavor-packed fat that their warm-water cousins ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

July/August 2020

in the Gulf and Latin America can’t beat. Shields believes their brackish environment imparts a distinctive flavor as well. “You have some salt, you have some fresh water. It gives it a depth and a richness that I don’t taste in other crabmeat,” says the Baltimore native. “I love Maryland crabmeat. It has a very specific flavor to me, but that’s because I grew up here and I think my sensory memory is still there somehow.” (Shields named Gertrude’s for his grandmother, with whom he used to pick crabs for family meals, his grandmother using every speck of picked meat possible.) In filling consumers’ hefty appetite for their favorite seafood, the Chesapeake’s crab suppliers compete with a robust flow of foreign imports. The United States imported 28,645 metric tons of swimming crab (blue swimming, red swimming and blue crab) in 2018, a nearly nine percent increase over the previous year, according to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. Most—41 percent—came from Indonesia, followed by China, the Philippines, Venezuela, and Vietnam. When Chesapeake restaurants either can’t obtain or don’t want to pay for local crabmeat, they turn to imported meat, a distinction many consumers fail to notice. Shields says Southeast Asian crabmeat has a more neutral flavor to which even discriminating Chesapeake diners have become accustomed. Some of his customers had palates so primed by bland Asian-meat crab cakes they became suspicious of the real thing. “People were sending them back,” he says, “telling me, ‘These taste fishy.’” The chef has used Southeast Asian crabmeat in the past, but doesn’t like the fact some processors bleach the meat. Bleaching whitens and preserves the crab, but also removes tasty fat, he says. “If you’re going to use it in a recipe that has a good bit

Some customers had palates so primed by bland Asian-meat crab cakes they became suspicious of the real thing.

of flavoring—say a crab cake with a lot of Old Bay in it and Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce—you’ve got a tasty little thing there,” Shields says of Southeast Asian crab. “But if you try to do an Eastern Shore version where you’re bathing that crabmeat in lemon butter with just a smattering of bread crumbs and maybe a little bit of lemon juice and horseradish, then you want the real deal because that’s all you’re tasting. You’re tasting that crab.” Interestingly, the crab cakes least likely to be mislabeled, according to Oceana’s report, were those sold on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where only nine percent were improperly identified as opposed to more than 45 percent in Annapolis and Baltimore.

In Oceana’s 2015 study, most of the imported crabmeat masquerading as blue crab in locally sold crab cakes came from Southeast Asia. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recognizes 13 crab species on its list of acceptable market names, but only one, Callinectes sapidus, can be sold as “blue crab.” The blue crab imposter detected most often in Oceana’s DNA testing was the Indo-Pacific blue swimming crab Portunus pelagicus. If a blue swimming crab by any other Latin name tastes the same to many consumers, where’s the harm? “It undermines local fishermen and seafood businesses that abide by the rules,” says Beth Lowell, an Oceana senior campaign director who participated in the group’s study.

Picking crabs is difficult work that draws seasonal immigrant labor to Maryland's Eastern Shore.

July/August 2020

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In the 1990s, Phillips, an iconic Chesapeake brand, kicked off the search for imported crabmeat to meet demand.

“They are competing with a market that’s flooded with mislabeled seafood.” With the Bay’s commercial crab harvest strictly regulated, watermen, processing plants, wholesalers and restaurants can’t competitively price their supply of crabmeat. “It has ripple effects throughout the supply chain and the local economy,” she says. And, Lowell argues, the public gets a false sense of the fishery’s sustainability when mislabeling is allowed to continue. “If we always call everything Maryland blue crab or Chesapeake crab, seafood consumers are going to think there’s an unlimited supply.” The Bay’s crab population declined in the 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in a federal disaster declaration for the fishery in 2008 and tightened restrictions on the harvest. The outlook for Bay crabs is less blue than it was a decade ago, and regulators try to keep it that way, setting harvest targets to ensure the population’s sustainability. An iconic Chesapeake brand, Phillips Foods of Baltimore, set the imported crabmeat movement in motion here in the 1990s. Searching for sources beyond the Bay’s

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imperiled blue crab supply, the company established operations in the Philippines harvesting, processing and importing Portunus pelagicus crabs. (Such is the nature of Maryland’s tight-knit crabbing industry that both the Phillips and Clayton families launched their businesses on the same small island chain in Dorchester County generations ago.) When foreign imports ramped up, the first market they took aim at was the crab-eating capital of the East, Chesapeake Bay. “They went after our local markets and kind of saturated them,” says Joe Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood in Cambridge, one of fewer than two dozen processors remaining in a state that once boasted scores of crabpicking and processing plants. Squeezed by a shortage of local labor and higher overhead than their Asian and Latin American competitors, Bay processors struggled to stay afloat. Since then, consumer demand in other parts of the country has risen, so imported crabmeat enjoys a more diverse market, one that’s not always in direct competition with Bay crabmeat. Most of Clayton’s competition these days comes from Venezuela, Brooks says. “They seem to be the

July/August 2020

ones that all of a sudden you see they’re offering product for sale for low prices.” Except for periodic closures, the Venezuelan crab fishery operates year-round. As a result, “When they’re producing, they can put a lot of meat on the market quickly,” Brooks says. Some of it has caused problems. Non-pasteurized crabmeat imported from Venezuela and sold at stores sickened two dozen Marylanders the last two summers. The Maryland Department of Health warned consumers off the product at the time, and federal authorities stepped up inspections of fresh crabmeat imported from Venezuela. Domestic processors like Clayton, which buys its crabs off the boat from watermen, promote their crabmeat’s freshness. “The product we buy is literally caught today, cooked today and shipped and delivered either tomorrow or the next day, so the time in transit doesn’t add up to much,” Brooks says. “We try to go after the people more particular about what they buy and eat. The buzzwords fresh and local and all natural are the things that really help us, and rightly so.” When Steve Vilnit left his job with a seafood wholesaler in 2010 to become director of fisheries marketing for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, he wanted to raise the local stature of Bay crabmeat. He launched “True Blue,” a marketing initiative designed to persuade chefs that native blue crab was worth the extra bucks per pound and to steer consumers to restaurants and markets offering the Maryland product. True Blue enrollees who pledge to spend at least 75 percent of their annual crab purchases on Maryland

crabmeat get to display the program’s logo, signaling to customers their product’s authenticity and their support for the local industry. To ensure compliance, Vilnit spotchecked the businesses’ invoices, but mostly relied on owners to honor their pledges. Other than de-listing, the voluntary program doesn’t proscribe penalties for violators. “While that’s not a perfect system, it did at least ensure that they were buying some [Maryland crabmeat],” says Vilnit, who after five years returned to the wholesale trade. The True Blue program is now under the purview of the Maryland Department of Agriculture. “It’s easy for a restaurant to look at a price list from a wholesaler and just place an order and then it shows up at the back door,” Vilnit says. “They don’t really see how much work goes into it.” He used to escort chefs on field trips to see Clayton’s and other crab industry operations firsthand. (The Agriculture Department now offers virtual tours via social media.) “Things like that just increase the perceived value of the product,” Vilnit says. “It goes a long way toward the price not being the biggest thing anymore.” More than 70 restaurants and markets currently participate in True Blue, including Shields’s Gertrude’s. Oceana and others applaud the program for raising awareness about local, sustainably sourced crabmeat, but skeptics say it doesn’t address the 800-pound crustacean in the dining room: Can consumers entirely trust restaurants and markets—which aren’t legally required to identify the source of their crabmeat—when the businesses are competing for a finite, pricey product with a highly variable supply? After all, Oceana scientists found a few mislabeled

crab cakes even among True Blueparticipating businesses. When Shields returned from a stint on the West Coast to open Gertrude’s in 1998, he found it difficult to find a reliable crabmeat source despite his deep local roots. Most processors had commitments to existing customers. “I had to kind of be the new kid on the block and get in line,” he says. Eventually, J.M. Clayton became his supplier. “I’m a lucky guy, but most restaurants would not be able to do that. And the price point could be a good bit higher, so you also have to have a customer base that’s willing to pay the price.” Clayton’s Brooks endorses the True Blue program, but acknowledges some businesses either can’t meet or can’t afford to meet its criteria. “Everybody’s got to row their own boat,” he says. “Not everybody has a supplier that says I can keep you supplied throughout the off-season.” Clayton does its best to satisfy clients’ year-round needs, he says. “If we have a good relationship with a restaurant or a market and they say they need product all winter, within reason we do our best to accommodate that.” Shields concedes even he uses imported crabmeat at times. During harsh winters, when he can’t get fresh Maryland crab and his pasteurized reserves are low, he’ll mix fresh Venezuelan crabmeat with Clayton’s pasteurized canned meat to make the restaurant’s signature “Gertie” cakes or crab cakes du jour. “Sometimes I’ll do sixty percent Maryland and forty percent Venezuelan. If things are really, really nasty, I’ll go for fifty-fifty,” he says. “It’s a good product. It’s delicious.” Generally, his customers don’t notice, but he tells them if they ask. “Restaurants are businesses,” he

says. “They work on the slimmest of margins, so you do your best and you try to make the very best product you can and support your local food economy.” Federal and state authorities are trying to address seafood chicanery. In 2018 and 2019, the Department of Justice successfully prosecuted two processors—including a Newport News, Virginia, firm—for intentionally mislabeling millions of dollars worth of foreign crabmeat as Atlantic blue crab. The Maryland legislature has twice considered but rejected a proposal to require that all crab products—even those served in restaurants—be labeled with the crab’s specific source. Oceana’s Lowell says consumers need such bait-to-plate transparency. “You have to require information at the point of landing when it enters the market, either domestically caught or internationally, and have the information follow that fish from the point it leaves the boat all the way to the consumer,” she says. “Then consumers can have more confidence in the seafood they’re buying.” Shields says he’s all for transparency: “We try to give our servers as much information as we can for where the seafood comes from and where we source it.” He doesn’t think source labeling on menus is practicable, however, and ultimately believes that a crab cake’s quality speaks for itself. “If it’s well prepared, if it tastes good, people are going to enjoy it,” he says. “If you say in bold letters this crabmeat is not from the Chesapeake, it changes their perception.” h Maryland native and award-winning contributor Marty LeGrand writes about nature, the environment, and Chesapeake history.

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2020 Marina Showcase A good marina can be many things. A launching pad for adventure, a home away from home, a safe harbor after a long voyage, or shelter from a storm. It’s where you keep one of your prized possessions—the one you spend your work hours dreaming of (and paying for). Depending on what you’re looking for, whether it’s a transient slip or a more permanent home base, the Chesapeake Bay offers marinas to meet every need. And the options don’t stop there. Looking for a resort marina? We’ve got them— with pools, playgrounds, dock bars, restaurants, and spas. If you need to get work done, there are lifts, mechanics, technicians, and chandleries to help out, ranging from full-service marinas to DIY boatyards. Whatever you need for your boat, there are more than 400 marinas ready to help out, ringing the 11,000 miles of Bay shoreline, so wherever your Chesapeake adventures take you, you’re never far from a safe place to tie up.

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Hounds & Pompano On the trail of oddball Chesapeake sport fish by Capt. Chris D. Dollar

.S. Eliot didn’t have the current pandemic in mind when he penned the words, “April is the cruelest month…” But so was May and June, and man, it remains an appropriate sentiment for the times. Almost no one has been spared some degree of pain and hardship. Those of us who make a living taking people fishing are trying to figure out what this will look like when some sense of normalcy returns. Also, and unrelated to the pandemic, tighter restrictions have fallen on some popular game fish, most notably stripers and bluefish. This has me thinking about getting off the beaten path to chase fish that aren’t normally top of mind. Here are a couple of them:

Houndfish Some time ago, we were out in my Jones Brothers skiff prowling along the Poquoson Flats, one the Chesapeake Bay’s major underwater grass beds located on the south side of Virginia’s York River. I cut the engine and let the boat drift silently past the meadows of eel grass. Three fishermen from three generations were aboard, and we marveled at a pod of bottlenose dolphins that frolicked along the deep edge of the flats. My enthusiasm was tempered by the suspicion that this meant the houndfish we were searching for would be laying low to avoid becoming dolphin dinner. Houndfish have been an obsession for me for more than 20 years, and for that, I have to thank or blame Dean Bieri, my occasional Virginia angling and beerdrinking co-conspirator. He and other locals call them “Poquoson marlin” due to

CBM

the fish’s propensity for launching their slender bodies skyward like the pelagic billfish found off of our Atlantic Coast. “We discovered these fish while crossing the [Poquoson] Flats after a failed cobia trip in the mid-1980s.” Bieri recalls. “Their aggressive strikes and grey-hounding runs quickly turned them from a save-the-day species to a fish I love to target. They have a colorful and exotic appearance, almost gator-like. They have been a treat for my experienced angling buds as well as novices. I understand they pickle and eat them in Louisiana, but their green and odd-smelling flesh maintains their sport-fish-only status in my book.” Between late May and early August around the lower Chesapeake and Atlantic Coast, houndfish rarely disappoint as they recklessly chase metal lures. They seem to hang out in small packs and take turns attacking baitfish and fake baitfish lures. They close ground with lightening speed, and once in range, they use their narrow beaks to thrash at the lure, often times sending it sailing out of the water. It isn’t easy to hook them. It depends on the angler’s skill, and the usual scenario is something like this—dozens of strikes with about a 30-percent hook-up rate and lots of blow-ups and laughs. Landing success is typically a fraction of that. Patience pays off in bringing one of these critters alongside to be quickly admired and carefully released. Before you start casting, approach the flats very slowly, and look for swirls among the bare patches in the grass beds. These voracious aquatic wolves prefer spoons dressed with white, yellow, or chartreuse bucktail fibers with plenty of flash tied in. Hopkins spoons and Shorties,

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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Specialized Baits Li’l Bunkers, and the new Rain Minnow from G-Eye Jigs work well. My preferred weights range from half-ounce to one ounce. I also like slow-sinking or topwater swimming lures such as the Yo Zuri Crystal Minnow, the Super Spook, Jr., or Rapala’s Saltwater X-Rap. One technique that has worked for me is the old “pop n’ swap” whereby you cast a hookless topwater plug as far as you can and rip it back in as fast as you can. A second angler casts out a shiny metal spoon and reels it back hot on the trail of the plug. Occasionally pause the spoon for a moment to allow a possible hound to catch up. The fish might initially hit the offering like a Mack truck, but usually it’s the second strike from that fish or one of its pack mates that results in a solid hookup. Any bit of

slack in the line will guarantee a lost fish, however. Houndfish are about as docile as fifth graders on Skittles, so beware of their leaping ability, strength, and teeth. On one memorable trip, a rambunctious houndfish tried to exact revenge by rocketing out of the water, heading directly toward me with teeth bared. You bet your bottom dollar I flinched! Rows of razor-like cutters tearing toward your face will have that effect. Injury and even (very rarely) death has been caused by a houndfish, and more frequently by their close cousin, the needlefish. This usually happens at night when, attracted by artificial lights, they leap over small boats and impale an unsuspecting angler. Ouch. I strongly advise against pulling a houndfish over the gunwales without

gloves and a fish gripper. They are stronger than you think, despite their skinny bodies. Nets aren’t that effective in my experience because the fish thrashes and the lure gets tangled in the net. It’s best to let the fish calm down in the water, then use extra-long, needle-nose pliers to extract the hook. If you’re wondering if houndfish are good table fare, consider that Vic Dunaway wrote in his landmark Sport Fish of the Atlantic that they are “quite good, surprisingly.” I’m told by reputable angler/cooks that houndfish is pretty good smoked or pickled. I’ll take their word since I have not eaten one, nor do I intend to. Either way, come summer, I’ll return to the Poquoson Flats to subject myself to more rude behavior.

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Pompano Another visitor that doesn’t show up on many Chesapeake and mid-Atlantic anglers’ wish-lists is the Florida pompano, a tasty little fish that swims our way in late summer. Perhaps they should be, since they’re showing up more frequently in our waters. According to Scott Lenox, host of the popular online Fish in OC report, 2019 was a banner pompano year. “Last summer, we saw a bunch of them, much more so than in previous summers,” Lenox said. “Mostly surf and back-bay fishermen caught them while fishing for croaker or whiting.” According to Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologists, pompano are swimming further north into the Chesapeake Bay as well, and they expect more will come. Fourteen-year-old Scott Hartzell Jr. of Easton recently gained pompano experience with a 3.375-pounder he caught to become Maryland’s first official state record holder for that species. His fish hit a gold Clarkspoon while he was fishing with family and friends over the Stone Rock off of Tilghman Island. “We’ve caught crazy fish before, but never this,” said Scott Hartzell Sr.. Pompano are good fighters on light tackle, peeling line in a way that belies their small size. (Most are under a pound.) Better yet, you don’t need a fancy center console boat or expensive gear to reach them. Bottom fishing from the surf, off of piers, or along inlets is the most popular method. Silver bodied with olive green backs and bright yellow coloring along their undersides and lower fins, they’ll eat shrimp, clam, crab, or squid cut into small pieces. Experienced surf anglers say mole crabs, which you can dig out of sandy Atlantic beaches, are the best pompano bait. Small Kahle or circle hooks work well for most situations, whereas long shank hooks rigged with floats that keep the bait off the bottom are preferred by surf anglers. When the ocean is calm and pompano bunch up, you can use small jigs dressed with brightly colored hair rigged in tandem. Tip them with small chunks of shrimp and work them along the bottom. These are just a couple of out-of-the-ordinary fish to fulfill an angling bucket list. Give them a try and you might experience a renewed passion for the chase. h

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Chris Dollar is a fishing guide, tackle shop owner, and all-around Chesapeake outdoorsman with more than 25 years experience in avoiding office work. July/August 2020

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jody’s log All of which brings me to the crux of the matter: Can we cruise, fish, trailer, sail, paddle responsibly under the circumstances? Sure, we all want to get out on the water this summer, but many of us are understandably wary of jumping back into the life we recently left. With that in mind, here are five points of consideration. I’m sure many of you have wrestled with these already and come up with some answers of your own. Send me a line at jody@ chesapeakebaymagazine.com. Let’s discuss. We are all on uncertain ground here.

1. Staying out

How to Boat in a Pandemic Go! Stay! Anchor! Eat? Let’s talk! story & photo by Capt. Jody Argo Schroath

et’s talk about some of the issues facing us for the first time in our lives as we head out on the water in a pandemic. Next week, which is to say the third week of May, I will pull out of St. Petersburg, Florida (yes, that state!) and head down the Gulf Coast to Fort Myers, then cross the state on the Okeechobee Waterway before turning north at Stuart for the 1,500-mile trek up the ICW to the Chesapeake Bay and then another hundred to my slip in Annapolis. The whole shebang should take me about a month. Perhaps you will be reading this just as I arrive. I have made the trip many fingers on both hands-worth, but this time, with the pandemic, it’s going to be very different experience. This time, in addition to my usual goals of pointing consistently in the right direction and not running aground, I must add the crucial goal of neither spreading nor contracting the virus. It’s not a goal to be taken lightly, and like many other snowbirds who have found themselves in the same position, I’ve given it a lot of thought over the past two months of lockdown.

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I’ll begin with boating’s unique strength: Our ability to get away, and stay away, from everybody else. In other words, the more we can stay away from the dock, the less chance we have of getting ourselves or others into trouble. For me, that’s going to mean not coming into a marina each night. As much as possible this trip, I plan to come into a marina only for fuel, a pump-out, and water, preferably all at one time. For those of you with 500-gallon fuel tanks and two heads, you will probably be able to go weeks without touching land other your own slip. Lovely. I can’t do that. I will spare you all the numbers, but the upshot is that I will have to come in for fuel, pump-out, and water about once a week, if I add four 5-gallon jerry cans. When I do, without fail I will wear a mask and gloves. It’s a small thing, and I will do it, if for no other reason, than as a sign of respect for those who are putting themselves at risk for my benefit. Boy, they are going to hate the part where I fill all those little jugs, though! Sorry people, it’s for your own good.

2. Coming in Staying out is absolutely the safest thing we can all do while boating, but at the

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same time, we don’t want to risk life and limb just to avoid docking. There are places along the ICW and on the Chesapeake where the safest place to be during a blow is in a slip. And this means additional contact. But the good news is that by now, most marinas that accept transients have given this distancing thing a lot of thought. Dockhands may be there to catch your lines, but they will likely be the only contact you’ll need to have. Wearing a mask and gloves while docking makes everyone safer. (So would a soundproof-chamber for my fur-bearing crew, Sammy and Bindi, but we won’t go there.) Later, as we walk off the docks and then around the marina and into town, a mask can be an additional precaution in case of narrow docks and crowds, but social distancing (one adult alligator or a dozen jumbo crabs’ worth) is essential. So, come into a marina when you need to, but do it with care and respect for everyone.

3. Running out of milk As chance would have it, I subscribed to a grocery delivery service last year when I was up the St. Johns River in Sanford, Florida for several weeks and couldn’t get to a grocery store without using Uber or Lyft. I figured out that the subscription cost for a year’s free delivery of groceries in cities and good-sized towns along the Eastern seaboard would quickly be a better deal than a few Uber rides. Since this service often includes a Target, office supply, and ABC stores, I could get a lot more than milk delivered right to the marina. With the pandemic, it has more than paid for itself again. Many of you have doubtless been making use of similar methods at home, though as many of you also have no-doubt considered, the paradox of

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this is that we put the shopping/ delivery people in harm’s way instead of ourselves. Still, from the standpoint of a number of persons contacted if all of us go shopping versus a lesser number of shoppers, it is arguably a rational trade-off. Sorry, got sidetracked there. The idea is to bring enough food along with you from home so you don’t have to resort to any shopping at all once you set out for the day, weekend, or week. When I’m cruising this year, I will consider it my duty to eat through that six cans of black beans and fourteen kinds of strangely shaped pasta I have collected in the pantry instead of shopping in person or by professional representative.

4. Running up against the steamed-crabs paradox Now we get to the toughest call: What about a delicious dinner at that great little restaurant you ate on last summer’s cruise? Oh, this one is so hard! On the one hand, you are doing everything you can to stay safe and keep everyone else safe (see Nos. 1, 2 and 3 above), but on the other hand, you have docked in St. Michaels because of, er, weather (oh, yes, I know that’s where you’re going!) and there’s this great little restaurant up the block that desperately needs the business and you’re sick to death of black beans. I know, I’ve been to St. Michaels too, and I know the one you’re talking about. Arguably, curbside pickup or restaurant delivery lets you have your pizza and eat it too. And it supports small local business. And eating outside at well-spaced tables may provide a measure of safety. I will tell you this, though: I intend to make the trip up the ICW and the Chesapeake this year without

stopping at any of my 35 all-time favorite restaurants along the way. I haven’t even tried fusilli a la black beans yet. I will however succumb to a maximum of one local pizza delivered to the boat from somewhere yet to be decided. My favorite restaurants have years of my past support and the promise of years of future patronage, but I’m not ready to eat in yet, even with the promise of eight pepperoni pizza’s worth of distancing. Still, a dozen or so steamed crabs at a marina picnic table under the shade of a maple tree seems like a bullet-proof choice.

5. Weighing it all in the balance

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So, can we go boating now? Absolutely! Get out on the water with your family. Feel the wind in your face. Sail. Fish. Paddle. Idle up a quiet creek. Drop anchor. Jump in the water. Pull a cold beer out of the cooler. Everything else will seem unimportant. Yes, I know that my trip back to the Bay is going to feel strange, a bit alienating and perhaps a little bit lonely. But on the other hand, you and I on our separate boats will have plenty of time to concentrate on why we do this in the first place. At the end of the day, we’ll all watch the sun drop behind a wall of pines or oaks or a distant city and fall asleep to the sound of the water slapping lightly against the hull. Sometime during the night, we’ll feel the boat swing to the tide, and the things we miss—friends, raft-ups, busy restaurants—will all be there next year. h CBM Cruising Editor Jody Argo Schroath, with the help and not infrequent hindrance of ship’s dogs Bindi and Sammy, goes up and down bays, rivers and creeks in search of adventure and stories.

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Chesapeake Lifestyle at half the cost

O R I E N T A L- T H E B O A T I N G C A P I T A L O F N C 404 High Street, Oriental 4 Bed / 2.5 Bath $395,000 | 1,995 ft2 This coastal style home boasts high ceilings, hardwood floors, oversized doors & a large welcoming front porch for enjoying river breezes or greeting neighbors out for a walk around town. The spacious kitchen is a dream w/ ample cabinetry & granite counter tops. Property also includes an adjacent, additional lot opening up many possibilities. This lovely residence in a quiet corner of “Old Oriental” is a fantastic place to call home!

651 Quail Rd, Merritt 3 Bed / 2.5 Bath $677,520 | 2,363 ft2 A private paradise positioned on a peninsular setting with the rare combination of protected dockage & 400+ feet of waterfrontage. Built to fully enjoy the private woods & sparkling waters beyond! This residence truly offers elegant and convivial living. Many extra features including: standby generator, concrete pier has a boat lift. A perfect place to come home to after a pleasant day of gardening, fishing or sailing!

105 Longmeadow Lane, Oriental 5 Bed / 4.5 Bath

(Primary + Separate)

$335,000

The good life at Longmeadow Haven! Down a private lane, & invisible from the road & the cares of the world, you will find a storybook retreat like none other! A 2bed/2bath residency w/ an attached 1bed/1bath “in-law quarters”. Across the meadow resides a lovely 2bed/1.5bath furnished guest cottage w/ a workshop and boundless possibilities. Think AirBnB! Residential or commercial, w/ multiple buildings & positioned at the tranquil headwaters of Kershaw Creek with a private dock. All built on 3.7 acres.

22826 Hwy 55, Oriental NC | 252.249.9800

ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

July/August 2020

T I D E WAT E R C O U N T RY. C O M