From the Chickens to the Crabs - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 75

The declining crab population is due in part to overfishing, but the main culprit re-
mains the dead zones, which scientists estimate rob the bay of some eighty-three thou-
sand tons of ish and other ocean life each year, which is enough to feed half the crabs
caught each year. Dead zones usually occur only in the summer, when sunshine and
warm water power the algae blooms, but this could change as the effects of global warm-
ing spread.
The watermen call dead zones “bad water,” and they compare notes on where algae
are blooming and where the crabs go afterward. “In the summer, you'll pull the [crab]
pots up, they've got algae and mud all over them. The bad water comes in and coats
everything and the crabs can't stand it,” Paul Kellam , the captain of the Christy,told
the WashingtonPost.His nineteen-year-old deckhand, Randy Plummer, said, “I want
to make a living on the water. But there ain't no future in it. Everybody knows that.”
At the end of our two-hour cruise, Captain Greene berthed AdventureBoundat a mar-
ina on the Delmarva Peninsula, in Maryland. In a restored inn overlooking the bay, we
were served a sumptuous lunch of crab cakes—the signature dish of the region. They
were large and moist, and as we smacked our lips and savored every last crumb, the chef
emerged from the kitchen. He beamed as we applauded his work. Then the party began
to break up.
Hirsch glanced out at the bay, framed in a window, and pulled the chef aside. “Just
out of curiosity,” he asked, “where does your crabmeat come from?”
Without a trace of irony, the chef replied, “Indonesia.”
THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT
In 1983, the EPA announced an ambitious cleanup initiative to clean Chesapeake Bay
of pollutants by 2000. The program was heralded as a model remediation program, but
the result is a case-study of just how difficult pollution control can be. The six states that
drain into the bay and Washington, DC, missed their first deadline, so the EPA set a new
deadline for 2010. By then, $5 billion had been spent on pollution controls but nitrogen
had been cut by only half the required amount and phosphorus levels had risen higher
in eight of Chesapeake Bay's nine major tributaries. The EPA did not punish the states
for missing their targets, and while the states did impose tighter regulations on sewage
plants, they did not crack down on pollution from farms or city sewers. The Obama
administration's ongoing attempts to force the states to take responsibility for reviving
Chesapeake Bay have been met with fierce resistance and apathy. The core problem was