Chesapeake Uncharted

Climate change is happening here and now in the Chesapeake Bay region. Here is a preview of Season One of “Chesapeake Uncharted.”

A thousand-year flood is supposed to happen only once every thousand years, right? Wrong! Ellicott City was struck by such storms in 2016 and 2018. Was it climate change?

Climate change is making it hotter. But communities of color are likely to feel the heat more. In Richmond, VA, solutions are being tested that could point the way for other American cities.

Wetlands are migrating to higher ground en masse. Barrier islands are losing the race to stay above water. And vast expanses of trees are transforming into "ghost forests." Hear how the natural world is responding to climate change in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Cities, from the small to the huge, prepare for a wetter future. We visit Alexandria, VA; Eagle Harbor, MD; and Norfolk to answer the question: Can we afford it?

Fighting sea level rise doesn't have to mean a huge construction project. Here, we examine policies and green solutions that could save coastal communities in the Chesapeake Bay region.

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

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.

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

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. 

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.

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.

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

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

Helping others fall in love with nature is one of Maya Alexander's main passions. She is African American and has experienced first hand the challenges of engaging with the outdoors, a pasttime that has traditionally been associated with the white middle class. Yet, Alexander, a community engagement manager for Virginia's Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley, finds a way to keep moving forward in the face of adversity. We talked about her strategies for encouraging more diversity in outdoor pursuits. And she offered glimpses into how environmental organizations can take up causes for marginalized communities … without alienating them.

Jay Fleming has devoted his life to documenting a dying way of life on the Chesapeake Bay. He has compiled his photographs of watermen into two popular books. His photographs, more than anyone else's, tell the tale of of the estuary's seafood industry. 

The Pennsylvania 4-H chapter has named Grace Ziegmont as one of its state project ambassadors. These are members who provide guidance to 4-H staff statewide on programming and projects. The 16-year-old York County resident also serves as the president of the Governor's Youth Council for Hunting, Fishing and Conservation. And we haven't even gotten to her role in making historic change happen within a federal agency. 

Symone Barkley, a Baltimore native, is a recipient of the North American Association for Environmental Education's "30 Under 30 Award," which recognizes young leaders in the field worldwide. And she's a fellow traveler in the podcast world, hosting a pair of podcast series for her employer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These would be “Planet NOAA” and "The NOAA Ocean Podcast.” She discusses the state of environmental education in America and what can be done to get kids more interested in nature studies. Barkley also talks about the kits she has developed providing kids with hands-on, STEM-based activities. More info about the kits is available here. 

Ron Lopez is a researcher in wetlands ecology at Virginia Commonwealth University who is part of a team breaking ground on our understanding of potentially toxic algae blooms in the Shenandoah River. His efforts toward developing remote-sensing methods to map those slilmy blooms are the basis of his ongoing doctoral thesis. So, yes, we will be talking about drones. Lopez also discusses his atypical path into academia. 

Connor Tupponce, a member of the Upper Mattaponi and Chickahominy tribes, discusses his work promoting tribal consultation in environmental and land-use matters in Virginia. Indigenous voices are crucial in managing public lands, he says. That's especially true at Werowocomoco, the recently rediscovered site along the York River that was once the seat of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Migrations shape life in the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Follow along with Chesapeake Bay Journal filmmakers David Harp, Tom Horton and Sandy Cannon Brown as they track the journeys of monarch butterflies, eels, tundra swans and shorebirds in their latest documentary, Chesapeake Rhythms. Hear behind-the-scenes interviews with the filmmakers as well as original reporting by Jeremy Cox and Lauren Hines-Acosta. The new podcast season debuts May 21.

Take a sound journey with the makers of the Chesapeake Bay Journal's latest documentary film, "Chesapeake Rhythms." Dave Harp, Tom Horton and Sandy Cannon Brown share the behind the scenes story of how they captured footage of tundra swans, monarch butterflies, eels and shorebirds. 

All about eels. Along with great blue herons and humans, eels are probably the most widely distributed of all Chesapeake Bay species. The returning eels will spread throughout the Chesapeake and its 40 some rivers and thousands of streams, eating and being eaten. It's hard to think of a more vital part of the region's aquatic ecosystem. 

Monarch creatures may be small creatures, but they go on an epic adventure every year across much of the globe. Now, the federal government is stepping in. In December, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list monarch butterflies as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. But since then, the new Trump administration has begun discussing rescinding the definition of “harm” in the act. That could remove certain protections for all listed species and their habitats.