Chesapeake Bay

Winter whale-watchers don't necessarily have to go to the Caribbean or Mexico's Sea of Cortez to see the big mammals. Some juvenile humpback whales have taken to leaving the southward migration and wintering near the relatively mild and food-rich mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, according to the Virginia Marine Science Museum. The museum began whale-watching trips off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., last week and plans to continue them five days a week through March 30, or until the whales migrate from the area.

The news about striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay keeps getting better. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has announced that there are more juvenile stripers in the bay this year than at any time since annual surveys of young fish were begun in 1954. Results of the 1996 survey show that the young-of-the-year index stands at a record 59.3, bettering the 39.8 of 1993. The index represents the average number of juvenile stripers caught in seine hauls at 22 sites around the bay. Each site is sampled three times each summer by making two sweeps, 30 minutes apart, with a 100-foot long, four-foot deep seine.

Harbor fog creeps through the marshes as women wearing hair nets ride bicycles over broken oyster shells and then amble into the "picking house," where their nicked fingers will rip white meat from steamed crabs. Outside on the docks, watermen jerk engines to a chorus rumble, their boats breaking through the black, unwakened Chesapeake Bay. New sun warms the eel grass; the white moon, like an old quarter, fades. An egret arches, its wings batting the water, stretching into flight.

Just after 6 a.m., as a few scattered stars fade into an opaque gray sky and the eastern horizon begins to burn hot pink, Rock Hall's harbors start to rumble like truck stops. Within a few moments, squat, work-bruised boats pull away from the docks they share with shiny yachts from Pennsylvania and Delaware. Their radios squawking, they head into Chesapeake Bay like cars funneled into a single lane on the interstate. The curious thing is that many of the men who guide these boats are not from this small fishing town on the northern end of Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Oh, it was going to be an adventure, the kids just knew it, sailing on open water with warm winds, constant sun and, most of all, an obliging crew. The boys worried about missing the World Series, of course, particularly since they were gone from noon Monday through noon Thursday last week. Life without television seemed a bit terrifying, if not downright unthinkable, to all 11 of the novice mariners. They were counting on pizza two meals out of three; if not pizza, then hoagies would do. All in all, it promised to be an easy sail down a lazy river.

Philadelphia's tall ship Gazela sets sail from Penn's Landing yesterday on its annual monthlong Chesapeake Bay cruise. The first big stop for the 177- foot wooden barkentine and its crew of volunteers is Norfolk, Va., where it will participate in the Harborfest over the weekend.

INTRODUCING: VIRGINIA Virginia is not a state . . . it is a commonwealth, as are Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Virginia is located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Highlands. The Piedmont Plateau cuts across central Virginia from north to south. Virginia owns the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. The eastern region of Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay, is called the Tidewater - because of the movement of ocean tides up the rivers.

The Academy of Natural Sciences is planning to raise more than $12 million during the next three years to expand its science museum and library at Logan Circle and to build a major laboratory in Maryland to study the Chesapeake Bay, academy officials said yesterday. About $5 million of the total would be used to construct and endow a 20,000-square-foot laboratory that would be on the Patuxent River, about 60 miles south of Baltimore in Calvert County. The facility would conduct basic and applied research on estuaries, particularly the Chesapeake Bay. The academy is also planning to spend between $2.2 million and $2.4 million to build a library to house its collection of science books and $1 million to construct a hall for an earth-sciences exhibit at 19th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The Philadelphia Cruise Terminal at the Navy Yard is getting its first cruise of the year on Saturday. The seven-night, eight-day sail will be on the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, as far south as Virginia. The 93-passenger ship, American Spirit, is operated by American Cruise Lines. The Saturday sailings from Philadelphia will be June 19, July 3, and July 17, 2010, and May 14 and May 28, 2011. Stops on the Philadelphia and Potomac cruise will include the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal; Chestertown, St. Michaels, Annapolis and St. Mary's, Md.; Mount Vernon and Alexandria, Va., and Washington.

The Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay, the most beautiful and most crucial water resources in the region, are facing environmental stress because they are near heavily populated and industrialized areas, scientists studying the waterways said yesterday. A panel of biologists and chemists reviewing the state of the Chesapeake Bay reported that there were marked declines in vegetation and fish populations and a spread of chemical contaminants in the bay over at least the last two decades.

POPLAR ISLAND, Md. - Eighteen years ago, Justin Callahan took a small boat into the Chesapeake Bay to study the last remaining bits of what had been a wildlife paradise. Bobbing above what once was a miles-long island that had eroded to a couple of tiny pieces of dirt, he had no way of knowing the scale of the plan that the Army Corps of Engineers was hatching. It was some plan, inviting comparisons to the Titanic in terms of engineering hubris and to Jurassic Park in terms of one-upping the natural world.

The Philadelphia Cruise Terminal at the Navy Yard is getting its first cruise of the year on Saturday. The seven-night, eight-day sail will be on the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, as far south as Virginia. The 93-passenger ship, American Spirit, is operated by American Cruise Lines. The Saturday sailings from Philadelphia will be June 19, July 3, and July 17, 2010, and May 14 and May 28, 2011. Stops on the Philadelphia and Potomac cruise will include the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal; Chestertown, St. Michaels, Annapolis and St. Mary's, Md.; Mount Vernon and Alexandria, Va., and Washington.

LITITZ, Pa. - More than a decade ago, tiny Lititz Run in Lancaster County was a ribbon of fetid water that was too hot, too slow, and too poisoned by agricultural runoff to support trout for more than a few weeks. Then the community embraced its revival. Neighbors re-created wetlands. Farmers changed time-honored ways. Today Lititz Run is a rarity among waterways: a year-round trout stream that has won national accolades and been cited as a model. But as a tributary in the Susquehanna River watershed, Lititz Run still isn't clean enough, and it adds to the pollution that the Susquehanna sends downstream to the nutrient-choked Chesapeake Bay. Pennsylvania bears a huge responsibility for the despoiling of the bay. The Susquehanna, which drains half the state, pumps in 40 percent of the bay's nitrogen, largely from agriculture, and a gusher of its two other major pollutants - natural sediment and phosphorus from fertilizers and detergents - abetting the decline of the Chesapeake's celebrated fishing industry.

STORY BY SANDY BAUERS PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHARON GEKOSKI-KIMMEL LITITZ, Pa. - More than a decade ago, tiny Lititz Run in Lancaster County was a ribbon of fetid water that was too hot, too slow, and too poisoned by agricultural runoff to support trout for more than a few weeks. Then the community embraced its revival. Neighbors re-created wetlands. Farmers changed time-honored ways. Today Lititz Run is a rarity among waterways: a year-round trout stream that has won national accolades and been cited as a model.

Bob and Reggie Wade were in their 80s, but there was nothing elderly about them, friends said. They were always planning parties, weekend outings, and trips. They drove to Florida every winter and spent the July Fourth weekend with friends in Virginia. Robert Magee Wade, 83, a financial consultant and retired company owner, and his wife, Rafaela "Reggie" Riggio Wade, 89, a former teacher, died July 26 from injuries sustained that day in an automobile accident in Lebanon County.

There are a lot of good reasons to hit the road: spring break, death or divorce, a midlife crisis. I have friends who are trying to visit the birthplaces of all 42 U.S. presidents, and as I've already bragged here, I've been to all 50 states. But one of the most popular excuses for a road trip is built around America's favorite pastime - taking in games at professional baseball stadiums. With the Phillies on the West Coast, I figure it's a great time for a minor-league journey, so I head south on U.S. Highway 40 toward Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Md., home of the Baltimore Orioles' single-A IronBirds.

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as Ed Sienkiewicz nosed the Katie G out of the Patapsco River into the broad expanse of the Chesapeake Bay, picking up speed as he headed east. In 30 minutes, he guided the 32-foot dead-rise workboat alongside the first buoy - a seeming miracle of navigation in the vast sameness of the bay. Wearing rubber overalls, T-shirt and ball cap, he grabbed the buoy and attached the line to an electric winch. Moments later, the first of 20 black galvanized wire pots rose from the sea, a half-dozen caged crabs scudding in alarm.

John K. Kaiser, 61, of Berwyn, entrepreneur, former advertising company president, and civic activist, died of melanoma Monday at Dunwoody Village in Newtown Square. In 1980, Mr. Kaiser joined the Philadelphia advertising agency of Lewis Gilman & Kynett as vice president and director of client services. By 1986, he was the company's chief executive officer and president. His wife, Elaine Lange Kaiser, said a happy coincidence had ended up giving her husband the chance to head the prominent firm.

Centerton's Dave Quinn carded a 5-under 67 on the Hagley Mill course at DuPont Country Club in Wilmington yesterday and led the field of professionals in the Philadelphia PGA's Multiple Sclerosis Pro-Am. In the competition at DuPont's Brantwyn course, Terry Hatch won after shooting a 2-under 68. The pro-am tournaments included 46 area professionals and 184 amateurs. The Results Individuals at Hagley Mill course Dave Quinn, Centerton. . . 35-32?67 Ken Peyre-Ferry, Links.

Seventy percent of Americans take in the beauty of our nation's estuaries every year. On vacation, they fish, boat, swim and bird-watch. Another 28 million make their living off the water's bounty. But at the rate these ecosystems are deteriorating, "we're going to have icky little puddles that might look nice on a good day but won't be good for anything," says Bruce A. Richards, executive director of the Center for Inland Bays in Delaware. An estuary is an enclosed body of water formed where freshwater from rivers and streams flows into the ocean.