Posted on 12/06/2004 5:00:16 AM PST by CJinVA
When was the Harry Nice bridge built...how long has Capn' Billy's been around?
Where is Captn' Billy's? Is that the old Aqua Land?
I know Captain John's down (just before the bridge) at Cobb Island, and that has been there forever, too.
Both precede me. But I've heard about them for as long as I lived there.
Now that Gilbert Run has been channelized, and many of those bogs filled or drained, you can't catch a blue crab worth eating without crab pots and a good workboat. Even then, the pickings are slim. I used to be able to walk along thr river shore with a dipnet and catch enough hard crabs for dinner in half a mile. I'd sell the soft crabs as a kid for pocket money ($3.00/dozen, when quarters were silver.)
Without those little marshes and all that nasty seaweed that used to grow on the bottom, oyster beds have been silted over, and fecal colliform has contaminated most of the rest. Nearshore fauna is just sbout gone.
The pity is that you used to be able to eat out of the Potomac and tributaries, and make a living there fishing, too.
Say what you want about the people who wanted to preserve that, but I think they had the right idea. IMHO, they are conservationists, not knee-jerk enviros.
Unfortunately, that got hijacked by a bunch of people who didn't understand diddley squat about a tidewater estuary, and just wanted something pretty looking to play in. What an over-regulated god-awful waste that produced, the ecology (from 40 years ago) is shot, but the regulations even prevent attempting to set it right.
It would cut down on shoreline erosion (wave energy buffer), reduce siltation, provide nearshore habitat, increase oxygenation, and fix nearshore sediments to keep many of the heavy metals in place, trapped in sediment.
There would still be some shellfish problems where heavy metals are present, but on the lower Bay and in the tidal portion of the Potomac and tributary estuaries, there is the potential for a comeback. We ate very well out of the Wicomico when I was a kid, you can't (reasonably) swim in it any more, much less eat much out of it now.
Unfortunately, reestablishing the millfoil and other plants would get back to the original problem, fouling boat props, and probably really mess with a Jacuzzi drive (jet boat, personal watercraft).
Simply enough, the people who occupy much of the riverfront now don't give a rat's a$$ about being able to fish or go oystering or crabbing, and don't care that most Cheaspeake Bay Blue Crabs come out of Louisiana now. They just want a big puddle to play in, and something that looks pretty.
Unfortunately, I don't see that changing much. Most of the envirowackos want people gone (and not harvesting seafood). Don't confuse them with the conservationists, who would like to see things back the way they were, but who, unfortunately are either in the minority, or so loudly over voiced by the wackos they don't have much of a chance.
The ACOE is managing the tidewater estuaries like a freshwater reservoir, and until they get a clue, things will just get worse.
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