Chesapeake Uncharted

Noah Bressman, a Salisbury University researcher, has quickly made a name for himself as a marine biology researcher and a science communicator. He’s active on social media. He organizes fishing tournaments that incorporate environmental education. He envisions a world with fewer invasive fish in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries -- a world made possible by people making subtle shifts to their diets. 

In early 2023, Carmera Thomas-Wilhite joined the Chesapeake Bay region’s most influential environmental group, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, as its first vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. How’d she get there? What’s her mission? Find out in our conversation.

Anna Killius is a political wrangler. Her formal title: executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission. She occupies a space with few peers in American politics: a regional influencer of environmental policy with her sights set on a single watershed. Here, she discusses how she builds consensus -- and steers clear of infighting -- to drive better results for the cleanup of America's largest estuary.

If anyone has the word "mentor" written all over them, it's Randy Rowel. He coordinates the Chesapeake Research Consortium's C-StREAM (Chesapeake Student Recruitment, Early Advisement, and Mentoring) program, helping to guide people of color into green careers. He talks with us about how the environmental sector can bring more diversity into its ranks and, in turn, be more effective in underserved communities. 

Within three years, Luke McFadden has built a mini-empire on social media, accumulating 1.6 million followers on TikTok and hundreds of thousands more on other sites. He simply shows what life is like as a crabber on the Chesapeake Bay. No one has been more surprised with his success than the unassuming 27-year-old from Pasadena, Maryland.

Imani Black founded Minorities in Aquaculture in 2020. In doing so, she set out to help people of color, especially women of color, enter the growing field of aquaculture. Aquaculture is the technical name for fish farming or, in this case, oyster farming. This is a story about seismic shifts in an industry, a Chesapeake Bay way of life. But it’s also a story about the power of one person trying to make a difference.

The federally led campaign to save the Chesapeake Bay is officially 40 years old. This season, we turn to movers and shakers in the Bay sphere who weren't born when the effort got started. With the cleanup facing a critical inflection point, these younger voices -- we call them "wave makers" -- offer a tantalizing glimpse into what the future may hold. 

As climate change fuels more Agnes-like storms, what will we do to protect vulnerable communities? Tangier Island in Virginia's portion of the Chesapeake Bay offers clues. 

Tropical Storm Agnes reshaped the way the United States responds to natural disasters on a national scale. Here’s how.

Environmental destruction wrought by 1972's Tropical Storm Agnes fanned the flames of the "Save the Bay" movement into a political wildfire in the Chesapeake Bay region. The storm's legacy is reflected in many current controversies, including the fate of the Conowingo Dam.

Record-setting rainfall during 1972's Tropical Storm Agnes washed decades-worth of pollution into the Chesapeake Bay's fragile waters, damaging the environment for decades.

Tropical Storm Agnes tested the limits of flood barriers. In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a wall wasn’t enough. This episode explores what the constant battle to hold back the Susquehanna River tells us about our current fight against climate change. 

How a radio station in central Pennsylvania defied official weather experts and delivered an accurate flooding forecast during Tropical Storm Agnes.

Fifty years ago, “America’s Estuary” was beginning to show signs of ecological collapse. But outside of a handful of environmentalists and academics, few people took much note. When a seemingly harmless tropical storm charged up from the Gulf of Mexico, few people took much note of that either. But within a few wild and tragic days in June of 1972, Tropical Storm Agnes changed the way people thought about the Chesapeake Bay and the power of storms in the Mid-Atlantic. This is the story of how Agnes ushered in a dark new era for the Bay -- an era we're still living in.

What matters most in the fight against climate change: individual action or collective action? Learn this and the best way to prepare a filet of blue catfish. 

Agriculture is both a cause of and solution to climate change. Which will win out?

A massive effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay faces more problems with a hotter, stormier world because of climate change.

Rising waters are swallowing historic sites along shorelines, portending a future in which we've lost key pieces of our past.

What oysters in the sea and birds in the marsh tell us about our changing Chesapeake.

President Trump told the mayor of Tangier Island that the community has nothing to fear from climate change. Experts aren't so sure.