SHADY SIDE, Md. — The sun is barely up when Bill Scerbo unties the lines on his aging crabber and turns its bow toward open water. He and his deckhand are heading out to check crab traps in the shallows where the Rhode and West rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay.
It's something that Scerbo, who is 65, has been doing since the 1980s. It was then, just out of high school and attending community college, that he had an epiphany about his future. "It was a beautiful day and I was sitting in an economics class and I just said, 'To hell with this. I'm done.'"
"I bought a boat and been out here ever since," he says.
But the catches of the Chesapeake's iconic blue crabs aren't what they were for Scerbo back when he started. Today, it's just two or three per haul — occasionally four, but sometimes none. Regardless, each trap must be carefully pulled up, emptied, rinsed, rebaited, and tossed back overboard.
"There were a lot more crabs in the '90s," he says. "There are more predators in the bay," too, notably the blue catfish — introduced to the Chesapeake for recreational purposes in the 1970s. They've thrived by eating native fish, crabs and other species.
"And, the climate's changing," Scerbo adds.
The Chesapeake is at an inflection point
In fact, Chesapeake Bay — the nation's largest estuary — is at a critical juncture, according to scientists and environmental advocates. Once plagued by severe pollution, it has shown notable improvement in water quality and wildlife abundance in recent years. But there's still a long way to go at a time when much of the federal funding for Chesapeake Bay, which totaled $840 million last year, is in trouble under Trump's "big beautiful bill" now working its way through Congress.
"I grew up in Baltimore city, where you used to see trash floating everywhere, where you weren't even contemplating swimming," says Hilary Harp Falk, president and CEO of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF). The nonprofit is dedicated to the restoration and protection of the watershed, which spans Maryland, Virginia and four other states.
"We've seen significant changes; improvements in local water quality. We've seen oysters coming back, underwater grasses in places where we had not seen them for a long time. And … people are seeing dolphins all around the bay now," Falk says.
About a decade ago, a CBF study estimated that the bay generates $107 billion annually from the economic benefits it brings to the six states within its watershed, including from its seafood and tourism. A cleaner Chesapeake would be worth billions of dollars more, according to the study. Yet efforts to curb pollution have faced persistent challenges — from agricultural runoff to untreated wastewater discharged by towns and cities along the bay.
In its latest annual report card, the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) gave the bay a C for overall health — a slight dip from last year's C+, but still an improvement over the string of Ds from years past.
"We had a bad year last year and [it has] a lot to do with climate change related weather that we're seeing, you know, hottest year on record," says Bill Dennison, the vice president for science application at UMCES. "The heat is not helpful for the organisms that need oxygen in the water. It's not helpful for the aquatic grasses — they burn out," he says.
Also drought, punctuated by extreme weather events, means crops in some parts of the watershed aren't soaking up fertilizer, "so there was all this runoff of the leftover fertilizer that didn't get absorbed by the plants," he says. Instead, it's getting dumped into the bay.
It's an indication of the obstacles the bay faces, says Kristin Reilly, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition, a collection of more than 300 nonprofits throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed that work for clean water. "We are definitely at an inflection point," she says. "We are making progress, and we are doing really great things, but we still do have many challenges ahead of us."
But those challenges are going to be harder to meet with fewer federal dollars — and some fear the hard-fought progress in cleaning up the bay could be lost if the budget proposal is passed as is.
Major cuts are proposed for programs that benefit the bay
While the Environmental Protection Agency's $92 million Chesapeake Bay Program — once targeted for elimination under the first Trump administration — appears safe for now, other key sources of federal support face steep cuts.
The proposed budget includes a $2.46 billion reduction to the EPA's Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds and eliminates $1.01 billion in categorical grants that fund water quality efforts. It also slashes $721 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development accounts, curbing grants for rural water and wastewater infrastructure.
All of these programs benefit the bay.
Reilly says in the past, reports of the bay's death have been greatly exaggerated. People have gotten used to negative headlines over the years and haven't noticed that things have started to change for the better. "We have seen a lot of progress, especially in those local rivers and streams," she says.
Reilly points to Chesapeake WILD, a program that gets a modest $8.5 million annual grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The program is aimed at headwater areas of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Its goal is to enhance habitat and support wildlife in those areas.
"That program has been wildly successful in increasing habitat for things like brook trout and black duck," she says. Unfortunately, though, its one of the programs likely to get cut.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, known as a strong advocate for the Chesapeake Bay, believes the network of local, state and federal programs and initiatives have been key to getting in reversing the bay's downward spiral and that cutting them would be a big mistake.
"These are all essential pieces ... especially in providing protection to habitat and doing very important scientific work that informs the overall effort," the Democrat says. "When you cut the science budgets, you're flying blind ... it's hard to know whether you're hitting your targets and it's hard to really measure progress and success."
NPR reached out to the potentially affected agencies. Some didn't respond; others, such as the Department of the Interior, would only say that they support the president's budget bill.
Bay oysters are staging a comeback
One bright spot in the bay this year is a recent report by UMCES and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. It shows that oysters — virtually wiped out in the 1980s from overharvesting, disease, habitat loss and water degradation — are staging a comeback. They've tripled in number over the past 20 years. Although they are recovering from a very low base, the findings are encouraging.
Despite the scarcity of bay oysters, a handful of aquaculture operations have moved into the bay to fill the demand from restaurants and grocery stores. Patrick Hudson owns True Chesapeake Oyster Farm in Ridge, Md. It supplies his own restaurant in Baltimore and ships varieties with names like "skinny dipper" and "chunky dunker" to customers as far west as Chicago.
They were named by Hudson himself. "I saw a bumper sticker in southern Maryland that said, 'I don't skinny dip, I chunky dunk.' And I thought that's what we'll call the big ones," he explains.
The farm started as a simple oyster garden 15 years ago that Hudson, who is now 39, tended with help from his father. Today it is a thriving business with several employees.
Around Hudson's farm, the St. Jerome Creek is visibly much clearer than most Chesapeake tributaries. That's because oysters are incredible filter feeders, he says. An adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons a day of the algae that cause dead zones.
"When there's less algae in the water, the water is more clear," he says. "You can walk around the farm and see your feet in chest deep water. You can see the seaweed growing on the bottom and you know, and when you drop a crab pot into the water around here, you've got dinner."
Hudson points out a number of blue crabs that congregate on cylindrical plastic pods in the water that are used to house baby oysters. But it's not just the crabs that have taken up residence at the farm, other aquatic species and birds have been attracted to the area, too.
Back on Bill Scerbo's boat in Shady Side, he displays a tiny crab hauled up on one of the last traps of the day. It's about the size of a half-dollar and way too small to keep.
"See this? It's this year's model," he says. "That's a good sign for next year."
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