Marine Life around us

The Chesapeake Bay is far larger than I expected and the water mostly clean and green. There are dolphins, but I have yet seen one but I have seen several Cownose Rays, which are brown and flap up to the surface with their 3' wing spans! Since Irvington, we have also seen white Moon jellyfish of all sizes and lengths. It has kept us from using the paddleboard on several occasions!

We have seen the crabs crawling up the dock posts (mating season) just to have people scoop them off. The strangest was in DC, a blue catfish settled in the exhaust pipe for several days.Seeing that she had laid yellow eggs in the pipe and another catfish keeping close watch, was entertaining.

At first I was sad that we had to turn on the engines thus evacuating the hatch, but read that the Blue Catfish are an invasive species in the Bay and threaten the other fish. I just have to say, what really bothered me was the constant trash that would float around us. No suprise, given the dense population, to see plastic water bottles and all sorts of debris. David and I would scoop it out around our slip, but I was frustrated that it was not done by locals on a regular basis. It is so easy to collect but we all get a feeling of learned helplessness around polution. Ugh! I will get off my soap box.