The Chesapeake

Part of the problem in dealing with public perceptions about Chesapeake Bay is that people think it will last forever. This obviously is not true. As oceanographer Jerry Schubel has noted, twenty thousand years ago there was no Chesapeake Bay. Since that time, "There have been other beginnings and endings of other Chesapeake Bays." As we look to the future, however, we can see that increasingly the transformation of the Chesapeake will be more a human phenomenon than a work of nature. We live in times when momentous technological change can alter the face of the planet; and in the depressing words of Bill McKibben, we have already stepped across the threshold of such a change; we are at the end of nature. In the years since the Civil War and most recently since World War II, we have brought about unwelcome changes, literally altering and killing a good deal of the bay's ecosystem. As theologians tell us, we cannot have a cheap grace. Neither can the bay have a future worthy of its name as an overused, polluted and derelict seascape.

John R. Wennersten, a long-time resident of Maryland's Eastern Shore, was educated at Bethany College in West Virginia, at Baylor University, and the University of Maryland, which awarded his PhD in 1969. He has taught American history and politics in the University of Maryland system since 1965. He is the author of The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay and Maryland's Eastern Shore: A Journey in Time and Place and has steadily published journal articles on Mid-Atlantic history