On the Bay

Catherine “Cat” Frederick wanted to be an Extension specialist before she even knew what one was.

Native mussels are beginning to earn their 15 minutes of clean-water fame as in a variety of restoration projects on Chesapeake Bay. For one mussel in particular—the common Eastern elliptio mussel (Elliptio complanata)—the American eel plays a key role.

My journey through college has been an untraditional one. After graduating from North Caroline High School in 2011, I enrolled at Chesapeake College in neighboring Talbot County. I had no idea what I wanted to study, and as a first-generation college student, I was a bit lost in how the whole college thing worked. Read more...

Most kids spend their time at the beach swimming and playing in the ocean. Not Brittany Wolfe. Growing up surrounded by water on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she was more interested in poking around the intertidal zone, finding shells and wondering about the animals that lived in them.

Some 20 miles upstream from Baltimore on the Patapsco River, a four-inch-long American eel is making a monumental climb. Wriggling up a steep 30-foot-long metal gutter lined with a climbing substrate, the eel finally gains the summit, then slides down the other side into a mesh bag in a holding tank.