The number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay is down slightly from last year, to 317 million, but researchers said the numbers are manageable and they see “no serious reason for concern.”

The population estimates come from the annual winter dredge survey released last month by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. It estimated that the overall number of crabs this year is down from the 323 million estimated in 2023.

The decrease was due to a drop in the number of adult crabs, which fell from 207 million in 2023 to 179 million this year. But adult populations are still within a range researchers consider safe.

Although the population of juvenile crabs continued to rise in recent years, it still remains below average.

Romuald Lipcius, a VIMS researcher who helped conduct the survey, pointed to the juvenile and female crab populations as points of focus.

“The number that we saw this year for the females was just below the average … it’s remaining at what I would consider to be at an average level,” said Lipscius, who is also a professor of marine biology at William and Mary University. “Not the safest level, but it’s no serious reason for concern.

“The issue that we have is that the juveniles have remained low for three years in a row,” he said.

Both female and juvenile crab numbers set off a “red flag” in 2022, said Allison Colden, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Although fluctuations in the population are normal, she said recent years have been concerning.

“Over the past few years, that trend, particularly in the juveniles, has remained low. We’re not seeing a spike like we would see typically where it goes up and down,” Colden said.

Colden and others pointed to possible causes for the overall low population numbers, all of which have been caused by humans. Those include pollution and invasive species like blue catfish, which were introduced to the Bay in the 1970s and ’80s for recreational fishing.

“In the James River … blue catfish were consuming on the order of 2 million blue crabs per year,” Colden said. “We know there are tons of catfish out there, and we know that they’re eating blue crabs, so there has to be some sort of impact.”

Mike Glasco, who runs a crabbing charter under the name Captain Puddin’, explained that chemical runoff plays a role in the blue crab population decrease as well.

“What they’re spraying in the fields is where you start the runoff in the bay. Pollution,” Glasco said.

“Three years ago, had a lot of crabs because they were hiding in the grass,” Glasco said. “That spring, after they sprayed the field, we had a lot of rain. Next thing you know, you see the grass floating and the crabs didn’t have anywhere to hide.”

Despite the overall population decrease, Frank Tuma – a commercial crabber who works north of the Bay Bridge – said he isn’t worried about the results from the winter dredge survey because it’s done in the wrong season.

“The dredge survey is done early in the season and what happens is you get a storm or you get a lot of rains like we’ve had and it completely changes what happens to the crabs,” Tuma said.

Weather is more likely to affect the catch, he said.

“Up here, where we’ve had a lot of rain up in the north side of the Bay Bridge, we’re not catching any crabs up here yet. And we should be,” Tuma said.

 

Researchers said the winter dredge survey is just one tool they have to measure blue crab populations. Carrie Kennedy, the director of DNR‘s Tidal and Coastal Management and Assessment Division, said the agencies are doing a stock assessment this year, which will be more comprehensive.

“Beginning this summer, we’re going to be conducting a stock assessment along with our partners, in the Chesapeake Bay,” Kennedy said. “The winter dredge survey gives us a really good idea of what’s happening every spring and what to expect for the following crab season.

“However, a stock assessment is far more thorough in the biological data … all of our biological data goes into it. All of our harvest data goes into it. and it’s a pretty in-depth look at the dynamics of the life history of this species,” she said.

BY: ELIJAH PITTMAN

For more than two years (and some would say decades), the challenge of the Lakeside housing development in Trappe has been an all-consuming concern for the Talbot County Council, the incorporated town of Trappe, the Maryland Department of the Environment, and most of all, the residents of Talbot County.

In short, could a project approved in 2003 but slow in finding financing and market demand continue with plans to eventually build more than 2,400 homes in a town whose total population was half that number? And were there appropriate plans for wastewater treatment, and had other infrastructure issues like schools and roads been adequately assessed?

These concerns led to the passage of Resolution 338 by the County Council. This resolution required a full review of each additional phase of Lakeside’s development to ensure compliance with the Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plan. It also mandated that any future expansion of the wastewater treatment plant beyond the initial 100,000 gallons per day allocation (around 400 housing units) must evaluate Trappe’s wastewater treatment capacity at each phase.

With the support of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), Resolution 338 was intended to safeguard the community and manage growth responsibly.

However, local environmental advocates like the Talbot Integrity Project questioned whether this was enough to protect the county’s critically important environmental assets. Specifically, they raised concerns about whether the maps used to define property and sewer lines were accurate when the project was approved.

The answer became clear at Tuesday night’s Talbot County Council meeting with the passage of two resolutions that attempted to address these concerns.

By a 3-2 vote, the council approved Resolution No. 347 with Amendment No. 3, which amends the Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plan (CWSP) to provide the Equivalent Dwelling Units (EDUs) for all phases of the Lakeside development. This aligns with the Planning Commission’s finding that Resolution No. 347 is consistent with the County’s Comprehensive Plan at their May 1, 2024, meeting.

Additionally, by a 3-2 vote, the council passed Resolution No. 348, which clarifies and confirms the water and sewer classifications for certain parcels incorrectly shown in previous revisions. The County Planning Commission also found this resolution consistent with the county’s comprehensive plan.

Following this important debate on such a high-impact housing development, the Spy’s Dave Wheelan turned to Councilmember Pete Lesher for an explanation. Yesterday, via Zoom, Lesher (who, along with Council Member Lynn Mielke, voted against Resolutions 347 and 348) clarified in simpler terms what action the Talbot County Council has taken and what it will mean for the Lakeside project going forward.

This video is approximately 15 minutes in length.

At first, oyster biologists were concerned. Monitoring efforts at some restoration sanctuary reefs in 2022 weren’t pulling up many oysters, even though the sites had previously been performing well.

So divers with the Oyster Recovery Partnership went into the water to investigate. What they found there wasn’t a shortage of oysters, but such a dense and mature population that the shellfish had cemented into three-dimensional reefs, thick enough that the team’s patent tongs sampling gear weren’t able to get them out of the water.

“We’re excited because we feel like we’re starting to reach our goal of self-sustaining reefs,” said Olivia Caretti, the partnership’s coastal restoration program manager. “In another sense, it becomes a question of how we adjust our sampling plan. It’s a good problem to have.”

These sites in the Tred Avon River are a part of an ongoing and long-term experiment in oyster recovery. In an effort to shore up declining numbers of the bivalve, Maryland dramatically expanded oyster sanctuaries in 2010 to cover 24% of historic oyster habitat in the Bay, a span of about 9,000 acres spread over a wide geographical area.

Then, in June 2014, Maryland and other regional governments signed onto the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement that outlined a goal to “restore habitat and populations in 10 tributaries by 2025 and ensure their protection.”

Maryland and Virginia split these 10 tributaries, and both states embarked on five large-scale restoration projects. In Maryland, these are known as the “Big Five” sanctuaries in Harris Creek and the Little Choptank, Tred Avon, St. Marys, and Manokin rivers.

Now, nearing 10 years after the agreement, Maryland’s restoration sanctuaries are on track to be completed in time to meet next year’s goal. Across these restoration sanctuaries, scientists are finding impressive signs of recovery, with considerable reproduction and the establishment of dense, vertical oyster reef structure.

“The success of these restoration sanctuaries is a testament to years of dedicated work,” said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz. “DNR and our partners are taking oyster restoration seriously, and it’s great to see our efforts result in these productive, living reefs.”

The restoration work is carried out by the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Maryland Oyster Restoration Interagency Workgroup, a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District, the Oyster Recovery Partnership and the Maryland DNR.

Of Maryland’s Big Five restoration sanctuaries, initial restoration is complete at four, and Harris Creek is considered fully restored. In 2022, Harris Creek had an average density of 462 oysters, including spat and small oysters, per square meter.

At the fifth large-scale restoration sanctuary, Manokin River, initial restoration work began in 2021 and DNR estimates it will continue until 2025.

Evaluating the Oyster Restoration Sanctuaries

The restoration sites are exceeding success metrics established by the Maryland Oyster Restoration Interagency Workgroup. The workgroup’s  2021 Oyster Monitoring Report on these large-scale restoration sites showed that 100% of 3-year-old and 6-year-old reefs that year met the minimum success criteria for oyster density–15 oysters per square meter over 30% of the reef area. More than 90% of the reefs had more than 50 oysters per square meter in the same area.

The 2022 and 2023 reports are scheduled to be released this spring, but DNR scientists think it’s likely that the trends already seen will continue.

“The five large scale sanctuaries have significant populations of oysters, given the massive plantings and the occurrence of natural spatset,” DNR Shellfish Division Director Christopher Judy said. “The next monitoring report will likely show a continuation of past results.”

DNR’s own oyster monitoring across the Bay has found that restored sanctuaries are high in oyster density, reproduction, and cultch (the shell or substrate necessary for juvenile oysters to grow on) as well as low in mortality.

From 2012 to 2022, DNR spent $49 million to restore oysters in the five large-scale sanctuaries. By the end of 2022, partners had planted 5.93 billion juvenile oysters and created 894 acres of oyster reefs at the Big Five sanctuaries, according to the working group’s 2022 Chesapeake Bay Oyster Restoration Update. Previously, these sites had only 42 acres of existing reefs that met the restoration metrics, which did not require initial restoration.

The Need for Oyster Restoration

Scientists and environmental advocates say this considerable undertaking was necessary to begin to address the need for oyster recovery.

Once far more abundant in the Bay, eastern oysters plummeted to a fraction of their early-1800s population due to historic overharvesting, disease-related mortality, habitat degradation, and reduced water quality.

The bivalve is a keystone species, a critical part of the ecosystem of the Bay, as well as an economic driver for the region, making restoration a priority. Oysters also serve as natural filters in waterways. Scientists estimate that adult oysters can filter more than 10 gallons per day in the Chesapeake Bay.

Sanctuaries are permanently closed to harvest, except on aquaculture lease sites, and intended as areas where oysters can grow undisturbed. This enhances the oyster broodstock population and allows the bivalves to build reefs that offer crucial habitat to many other Bay species.

Scientists hope that sanctuaries could also help facilitate pockets of natural disease resistance. In theory, oysters that survive after an outbreak of an oyster disease could better pass on their resistance if left undisturbed in a sanctuary setting. The diseases MSX and Dermo lead to significant die-off in Chesapeake Bay oysters in previous decades.

Restoring a sanctuary involves building cultch, the hard substrate that can support reefs, and planting spat, or juvenile oysters. The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge grows most of the oysters that supply these restoration efforts.

This fall, DNR’s annual dredge survey on juvenile oysters found prolific spatfall across a wide distribution of the Bay, both in numerous harvest areas and sanctuary areas. (Spatset or spatfall refers to oyster reproduction in an area.) It was the fourth consecutive year of above-median results for juvenile oysters. Data from the survey also indicates that sanctuaries are performing about on par with previous levels and expectations.

Environmental conditions in the Bay, such as higher salinity, have been more favorable to oysters in recent years, likely playing a major part in the increased spatfall. But research suggests that restored sanctuaries provide areas where oysters can thrive in the long term, especially when these environmental conditions are right.

Visualizing Oyster Restoration

Using underwater photographs from tributaries of the Chesapeake in Maryland and Virginia, scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center analyzed oyster habitats at 600 sites, including areas that were restored and unrestored, as well as sanctuaries and harvest locations.

Comparing the percent of the bottom covered by oysters and the amount of verticality—which indicates the buildup of reef structure—at these sites, restored sanctuaries performed notably well.

“Generally the reefs that are in the best condition at a Chesapeake-wide scale are the ones that are both protected from harvest and have seen restoration,” said Matt Ogburn, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and an author of the study, which was published in October in Marine Ecology Progress Series.

Oysters form reefs on older shells or other hard surfaces, and these structures grow vertically over time. These oyster reefs form the foundation of an underwater ecosystem, providing habitat for fish, crabs, shellfish, and other marine life. The reefs act as nurseries for small fish and hunting grounds for larger fish, which makes for prime angling for sport fish like striped bass and black drum.

Vertical reefs also provide more space for oyster spat to grow, which in turn leads to increased density. Vertical reefs allow the mollusks to stick up higher in the water and have greater access to algae, increasing water filtration, Ogburn said.

Sites that are harvested rarely have this vertical structure, Ogburn said. Harvest sites might be covered in oysters, but they’re all laying down flat at the bottom.

“A core finding of our study was that when oysters are protected from harvest like in the sanctuaries, those oyster reefs all look really good,” Ogburn said. “They often meet the restoration metrics or exceed them, and they also support other species.”

Can Restoration Sanctuaries Reseed Oyster Harvest Areas?

While sanctuaries have seen positive growth, it’s not yet clear how sanctuaries are affecting the overall oyster population in the Bay. Most sanctuaries are relatively new, and DNR scientists suggest that it will take time to gather all the data and have a better understanding of the Bay-wide benefits of sanctuaries.

The next five-year report will come out in 2026, and DNR scientists will analyze that data to determine if there are any indications that restored sanctuaries are contributing to spatset outside sanctuary boundaries. The DNR Shellfish Division has also been planting half-acre shell sites outside the Big Five sanctuaries since 2018, which could help demonstrate whether spat is spreading, either from sanctuaries or harvest areas.

When oysters reproduce, they release eggs and sperm into the water column. Fertilized eggs then develop into free-swimming larvae that drift in the water for two to three weeks before latching onto a hard surface—often other oyster shells. There, the larvae develop into mature oysters and remain sessile, locked in the same spot, for the rest of their lives.

A model developed by researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science suggests that larval oysters are able to spread widely before settling down.

Oyster larvae are extremely small—tinier than a grain of sand—and scientists can’t follow them in the water, said Elizabeth North, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who studies the influence of water flow on oyster larvae in the Chesapeake Bay. But the movement of the larvae can be estimated.

With a simulation that took into account tides, river flow, salinity, temperature and a number of other factors, North’s team predicted that greater than 95% of larvae end up leaving their reef of origin and settle somewhere else.

Oysters benefit from having a network of reefs that act as “landing strips” to catch larvae as they drift, North said. Some reefs are naturally suited, because of their size or position in the water, to be the “population hubs” that send larvae to other reefs, while others collect larvae but don’t contribute as many to other reefs. Restoration efforts have created new “landing strips” for oyster larvae.

North said oyster larvae are certainly leaving from restoration sanctuaries, though it’s not yet clear how much the larvae then populate the oyster bars of the commercial fishery, or how many of the larvae from commercial areas populate the sanctuaries that have “landing strips” in them.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that any reefs that have oysters on them, especially high density, 50 per square meter and higher, are broadcasting larvae to other areas,” she said.

Restoration and the Long-Term Outlook for Oysters

Though the Chesapeake Bay oyster population continues to face challenges, there have been other promising signs for oysters, aside from spatset numbers and reef growth. In the past two seasons, Maryland oystermen have brought in the highest number of oysters since 1987, at least in part due to successive years of good spatsets that generated increased numbers of oysters.

The 543,000 bushels in 2021-2022 and 722,000 bushels last winter resulted in a dockside value of $21.5 million and $31 million, according to the DNR Shellfish Division.

The spatset in 2023 marked the fifth highest in 39 years, with a historic geographic distribution that far exceeded prior spatsets, a recent milestone in natural oyster reproduction in the Bay. Shellfish biologists were finding spat in areas where they were rarely observed, including in the upper reaches of some Bay tributaries that are typically too brackish for strong oyster reproduction.

And restoration efforts continue apace. Last year, a record 1.7 billion new juvenile oysters produced at state hatcheries were planted on sanctuary and public oyster fishery sites in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.

Aside from restoration sanctuaries, there are some unrestored sanctuaries that are doing well. The Nanticoke River sanctuary, which received some limited small-scale restoration since 2020, had an average density of 417 oysters per square meter in 2022. Hooper Straits sanctuary, which received no restoration, had an average density of 294 oysters per square meter in 2022.

But some other sanctuaries that have not received restoration are performing less well. These sites tend to be in lower salinity areas, which are less favorable to oyster reproduction, or in places that didn’t have a lot of good oyster habitat prior to 2010.

But DNR scientists say these sites also present opportunities to get more oysters in the water and further restoration efforts.

“Right now, we have considerable unrestored sanctuary areas that are unproductive because they lack suitable substrate,” said DNR Fishing and Boating Services Director Lynn Fegley. “These areas will need investment to begin producing oysters, and this could come in the form of restoration sanctuaries or in the form of multi-use areas that include aquaculture and some wild harvest. The overarching goal is more oysters in the water and improved ecological function.”

In February, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a report calling for additional oyster restoration in Maryland and Virginia, highlighting the benefits oysters provide economically and environmentally, including their ability to protect shoreline habitats from erosion. The Chesapeake Bay Program will determine and approve any new goals for the Bay.

Smaller-scale restoration projects are in the works. In January, DNR committed to planting 147 million oyster spat in Herring Bay Sanctuary with mitigation funds from the Ever Forward running aground on an oyster bar in March 2022.

Cody Paul, a Dorchester County waterman who’s harvested oysters for 13 years, has worked with the Oyster Recovery Partnership on monitoring in the Choptank and Tred Avon rivers and Harris Creek. He said that, although sanctuaries remove bottom areas from harvest, he sees the benefit of them too, from helping build the overall broodstock of oysters to contributing to water filtration.

“The first time I ever went, it was jaw-dropping what you would see there,” he said of the sanctuaries.

Ben Ford, the Miles-Wye Riverkeeper with the environmental nonprofit ShoreRivers, has monitored and captured footage at oyster sanctuaries on the Eastern Shore and said he’s impressed by the recovery he’s seen.

“Oysters loom so large in our culture and our history and our environment,” he said. “So it’s great to give back and have that persist. I know it sounds trite, but for our kids and their kids—I have an almost 2-year-old and I want him to see what I’m seeing, and maybe something even better.”

Joe Zimmermann is a science writer with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Deena Kilmon of Easton has recently been named Executive Director of Waterfowl Festival, Inc. For more than 50 years, the Waterfowl Festival, Inc. has staged an annual event, the Waterfowl Festival, that has raised $5.7 million for wildlife and habitat conservation, education, and research. The organization is committed to creating an environment to restore and conserve the presence of vibrant, stable, and diverse populations, flourishing in clean and productive aquatic and wetland habitats. The expanded position will enable the Waterfowl Festival to have a greater impact in the next 50 years of its conservation and education activities.

Kilmon is an accomplished and enthusiastic marketing and communications leader with broad experience in all levels of marketing, advertising, and brand management having served in several positions on the Eastern Shore. Most recently, she served as Director of Strategic Initiatives for Easton Economic Development Corporation. Before this job, Kilmon served as Director of Engagement for The Arc Central Chesapeake Region. For several years, she was owner and operator of Foxy’s Harbor Grille in  St. Michaels.

She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently working on an MBA with a Marketing Concentration at Longwood University.  She is a graduate of Leadership Maryland and Shore Leadership. She has received several community awards, including APG Women to Watch in 2022 and 2023.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors and myself, we are thrilled to have Deena Kilmon as our new Executive Director.  The excitement comes from what we think she will bring to the Waterfowl Festival, everything from new ideas, collaboration with existing and new festival partners, and a chance to build and expand our current festival to allow it to continue for years to come.   I am not sure there is a limit to what we can accomplish together and look forward to working with her,” Eric Milhollan, President of the Waterfowl Festival, Inc. Board of Directors.

Kilmon’s current volunteer activity includes serving on the Easton Rotary Marketing Committee, Shore Leadership Board of Directors, Chesapeake Neighbors (The Arc subsidiary), Phillips Wharf Board of Directors, Optimist Club, and 100 Women Talbot.

“The Waterfowl Festival has been an iconic part of the Eastern Shore experience for over 50 years. To be chosen to be a part of its next 50 years is an incredible responsibility, one that I do not take lightly. I am honored to be a part of the legacy of the work that we do during the festival and throughout the year, helping to preserve our natural resources for generations to come.”

Maryland’s nascent offshore wind energy industry suffered a major blow late Thursday when one of the two companies planning to install wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City announced that it was “repositioning” its plans, pulling out of its agreement with the state and seeking alternative financial arrangements to keep the project going.

Ørsted, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind, emphasized that it was still committed to building its project in federal waters, but said it was opting out of the agreement it had reached with the Maryland Public Service Commission for financial clean energy credits intended to help fund the development. The company said that while it would still seek permits for the proposed wind farm from the federal government, and would continue to develop construction and operations plans for Maryland, the current financial realties of the offshore wind industry made it impossible to continue under the present arrangement.

Through two separate but adjacent leases known as Skipjack 1 and Skipjack 2 that had won state approval, Ørsted is ticketed to provide 966 megawatts of wind energy beginning later this decade. A company executive said Ørsted was determined to work with state officials, potential investors and other stakeholders in an effort to find a better way to finance and save the project.

“Today’s announcement affirms our commitment to developing value creating projects and represents an opportunity to reposition Skipjack Wind, located in a strategically valuable federal lease area and with a state that is highly supportive of offshore wind, for future offtake opportunities,” said David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO Americas at Ørsted. “As we explore the best path forward for Skipjack Wind, we anticipate several opportunities and will evaluate each as it becomes available. We will continue to advance Skipjack Wind’s development milestones, including its Construction and Operations Plan.”

By saying the Danish company was exploring “future offtake opportunities,” Hardy was signaling that Ørsted will be looking for new funding streams, new investors, new government programs that could potentially generate additional capital, a new rate scheme for electricity consumers — or some combination.

But it isn’t quite clear where the discussions in Maryland will go from here.

By Josh Kurtz

Editor’s Note: As part of the Spy’s welcoming of the new year, we thought our readers would particularly enjoy this inspiring story by Mid-Shore native Norman Greenhawk and his conservation journey from Cordova to the Philippines to create the Harris Conservation Initiative and his plans for the Eastern Shore.

Twenty years ago, if you told me that I’d be writing this from the Philippines, I wouldn’t have believed you. It’s a far cry from Cordova, Maryland, where I was born and raised. Like most people in town, my family is working class; anyone familiar with Easton Farmers’ Market likely knows my mother’s business, CD Produce, a mainstay at the Saturday market for over 20 years. My grandfather spent his life as a construction worker at James Julian Construction in Delaware. My grandmother worked as a cafeteria manager at the Moton and Dobson buildings at Easton Elementary School in Easton, Maryland. My mother supported our family with her market produce business, and even after retirement, my grandparents helped us on the farm and at our family’s produce stand. 

My grandparents, Harry and Stella Harris, lived just a mile from my house, and so every weekend I’d stay over from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening. We had a tradition; every week, we’d tune into Wild America and National Geographic documentaries that were aired on Maryland Public Television. These nature programs showed me a world that seemed like fantasy, with brightly colored treefrogs peeking out of bromeliads, giant birds swooping to catch prey, and forests that seemed older than time. My grandfather would take me fishing for bluegill and smallmouth bass at the “gravel pits” owned by his employer. My grandmother would buy every book that caught my eye; the topics usually centered on dinosaurs, tropical forests, frogs, lizards, and botany. My grandfather shared with me his passion of raising aquarium fish and tropical birds. When I wanted my first pet frog, he helped convert an old fish tank into a setup appropriate for housing amphibians. 

They supported my love of nature and the outdoors, but more so, they encouraged my education. I’m the first member of my family to graduate from college, earning my undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Washington College in 2003. My career took me away from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I’ve lived 11 years in Puerto Rico and five years in the Philippines. I’ve also worked and trained in Belize, Honduras, and Panama. My passions are conservation, herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians), forest ecology, and habitat preservation.

My specialty is ex-situ conservation, specifically, taking endangered animals from the wild, breeding them in captivity, and then returning the captive-bred offspring to the wild to boost populations. In 2015, my Fulbright award took me to the Philippines, where I established Project Palaka, the first organization in the country that focused on “ex-situ” (captive breeding) of endangered Philippine amphibians. We’re currently working to conserve and protect the Gigantes Limestone Frog, Platymantis insulatus, the most threatened frog species in the Philippines. Our team conducts population monitoring and threat assessment, in the remote Gigantes Islands, located in the Visayan Sea in the Philippines. We also have an assurance colony of the frog set up in Subic Bay, Zambales. Since October 2022, Project Palaka has been breeding the Gigantes Limestone frog in captivity, with plans to start reintroduction in late 2024.

Over the past two years, I’ve considered how to bring my experiences home to the Delmarva Peninsula. While my grandparents always worried about me, they supported my travels and work around the world. They have since passed on, and I miss them daily.  As a way of honoring their memory, I created The Harris Conservation Initiative (“HCI”). Formed in 2021, HCI is a 509 (a)(2) charity. Through this organization, I seek to enact real, measurable conservation actions that focus on overlooked, understudied, and ignored species of herpetofauna and freshwater fish. I have established partnerships in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Belize. Now, I’m developing projects in two additional areas- Japan, and back home on the Delmarva Peninsula. 

The Delmarva Peninsula, although small, contains six ecoregions and five types of wetlands. The Peninsula’s diverse habitats, from the forests of the Piedmont Uplands near Pennsylvania to the coastal wetlands, are home to 70 species of reptiles and amphibians and more than 40 species of freshwater fish. Conservation organizations around the world rightly focus on protecting the biodiversity of developing nations, where threats to the environment are often intensified. But that doesn’t mean that developed nations have solved all of their ecological concerns.

On a local level, I’m aiming to set up a network of study sites to monitor target species across various ecosystems on the Delmarva Peninsula, to establish updated baseline populations of threatened species, as well to enact data-driven conservation measures to protect Delmarva’s herpetofauna. I am also highly open to collaborating with local, established NGOs and conservation groups.

Just as importantly, I also began the Harris Conservation Initiative to provide the same opportunities that I have had to others. A major goal of the organization is to facilitate a research and collaboration exchange program between each project. From my time my graduate program at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, I know that every year, Puerto Rican students travel to Maryland’s Western Shore to engage in ecological research. I’d like to open that opportunity to the Eastern Shore and Delmarva, so that students from abroad can experience not only the peninsula’s unique natural landscape, but culture as well. I also want to see talented college students from Delmarva travel to and gain experience in herpetological surveys in Belize, or tropical forestry in Puerto Rico. 

I believe that by providing these opportunities, young, aspiring conservationists will be able to gain experience working in ecosystems that they otherwise might not. 

Norman Greenhawk is the director of the Harris Conservation Initiative. He is a graduate of Washington College and is holds a Master Herpetologist certification from  The Amphibian Foundation. He is also a recipient of the National Geographic Explorer award and a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Specialist. He currently lives in Philippines.