As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
WHEN FEMALE BLUE CRABS RELEASE THEIR EGGS, they hatch into zoeae. These strange-looking beings (gnatlike? shrimplike?) can float and swim, mainly to move up and down in the water column. They need high salinity water to grow and molt.
After molting up to eight times, zoeae go through metamorphosis to emerge as megalopae. Now they look more like wannabe lobsters than soon-to-be crabs. They can crawl as well as swim. And they have claws.
Not many megalopae make it to the next stages, but a few become tiny blue crabs, called the instar stage, and then juveniles. Clearly recognizable as small crabs, juveniles will molt up to 20 more times in their journeys up the Chesapeake and into adulthood.
Just after her final molt, a mature female will have her first and last chance to mate. Once she mates, she will then hang onto the sperm while she migrates south to higher salinity waters near the mouth of the Bay. A female can produce several broods of eggs which she'll carry on her belly as a dense orange mass. When it was legal to catch and sell them, crabbers called these pregnant females "sponge crabs."
When they're ready, females can produce millions of eggs (from 8 to 14 million). Only two have to reach adulthood to give the Bay a steady-state population.
As erosion threatens treasured places around the Chesapeake Bay, communities are turning to nature-based solutions. Explore how living shorelines are helping to protect coasts and heritage on opposite shores of the Bay.
Living shoreline plants have a tough job: they must hold down the sandy shoreline with their roots and ease waves with their stems, all while surviving salty water.
Researchers are on a mission to determine which key components make a living shoreline successful at preventing erosion—but first they must gather crucial data.
Oyster biology is both an obstacle and an opportunity when it comes to living shorelines. Learn how and why oysters are sometimes included in living shoreline projects.
A living shoreline is under construction in Baltimore City—part of a sweeping project that aims to restore more than 50 acres of habitat along 11 miles of shoreline.
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