The Life & Death of the Chesapeake Bay

In 1966 Congress passed the National Sea Grant College Program Act to promote marine research, education, and extension services in institutions along the nation's ocean and Great Lakes coasts. In Maryland a Sea Grant Program -- a partnership among federal and state governments, universities, and industries -- began in 1977, and in 1982 the University of Maryland was named the nation's seventeenth Sea Grant College.The Maryland Sea Grant College focuses its efforts on the Chesapeake Bay, with emphasis on the marine concerns of fisheries, seafood technology, and environmental quality.This graceful overview joins geological, biological, and political perspectives of the Bay. The Bay we see today, Schubel notes, is only one of a long succession of estuaries, each with its own character. Descriptions of the past, present, and future dwell not only on social and geological changes, but also on politics, which, as Schubel makes clear, have a definite effect on how man studies and manages a resource like the Chesapeake Bay.