News Release

Annapolis Maritime Museum / 723 Second St / Annapolis, MD 21403
Contact: Jeff Holland / 410 295-0104 / director@amaritime.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - December 1, 2009

The Annapolis Maritime Museum’s 2010 Maritime Seminar Series opens with the Maryland premier of the newly completed film, Who Killed Crassostrea virginica? The Fall and Rise of the Chesapeake Oyster on Thursday, January 21, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. This is the first of ten weekly seminars covering a range of fascinating topics to commemorate our unique maritime heritage.

There will be one hour of presentation, followed by a discussion period. Enrollment fees for Museum members are $60 per person for the full series or $10 per seminar. For non-members, fees are $95 for the series or $15 per seminar. To enroll, call the Museum at 410-295-0104 or log on to www.amaritime.org.

The documentary was written, produced and edited by Michael W. Fincham for the Maryland Sea Grant College.  Who Killed Crassostrea virginica? chronicles the bewildering demise in recent decades of the native Chesapeake oyster. It re-evaluates the usual suspects – overharvesting, pollution, disease and mismanagement – in the light of recent research coming from science labs, from the bottom of the Bay itself, and from long-forgotten historical archives. 

Assessing the damage of recent decades, the film confronts these key questions: Where did the diseases come from? How did they enter the Chesapeake? Can we rebuild any of the reefs that once were here? Can we save oysters – and oystermen?

The documentary holds lessons of hope, and lessons of caution. Recent signs of disease resistance in native oysters suggest that oysters may eventually stage a comeback.

An earlier version of the film premiered last spring at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History as part of the annual Environmental Film Festival.

Upcoming Seminars:

January 28: Fight for the Bay

Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents author Howard Ernst on Thursday, January 28, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Dr. Ernst, who currently serves as an associate professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy and as a Senior Scholar at University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, will be discussing his latest book, Fight for the Bay: Why a Dark Green Environmental Awakening is Needed to Save the Chesapeake Bay.

Ernst is best known for his work in the area of environmental politics and is considered a leading authority on the Chesapeake Bay restoration program. His new book pulls no punches. Fight for the Bay describes the Chesapeake as “functionally dead,” an ecological zombie that has succumbed to a “light-green” environmental movement that too often adopted a philosophy of compromise over confrontation.

Dr. Ernst reveals a “political dead zone” where elected officials posture but fail to make the hard decisions necessary to achieve real environmental improvement, where polluting industries get what they want, and where the environmental community is left with hollow promises that things might get better in the distant future. 

While blunt in his evaluation of past and present failures to restore the Bay, Ernst believes that there is still time to turn the restoration effort around, and he sets out a new “dark green” strategy to do just that. This challenging book provides a wake-up call for everyone concerned about the future of the Chesapeake Bay and other ecological treasures. Copies of the book will be available for purchase after the seminar, but the public is warmly encouraged to read the book before coming to the talk, the hallmark of which is a lively discussion of strategies and problems associated with Bay restoration efforts.

Other books by Dr. Ernst include Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics, and the Struggle to Save the Bay (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

February 4:   Maritime Annapolis -- A History of Watermen, Sail & Midshipmen

Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents local author Rosemary Williams on Thursday, February 4, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Through her new book, Maritime Annapolis -- A History of Watermen, Sail & Midshipmen, (The History Press, 2009), Ms. Williams “chronicles the maritime history of Annapolis and reveals its residents’ deep connection to the ever-shifting waters.”

February 11:  “Smart” Buoys and the Captain John Smith Trail

Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents John Page Williams, author and naturalist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, on Thursday, February 11, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. John Page will discuss NOAA’s new “smart” buoys that mark the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. The latest “smart” buoy was recently anchored off of Greenbury Point, within view of the Maritime Museum. The “smart” buoys are loaded with sensors to help track Bay restoration progress. The information is relayed in near real time from the buoys to the Internet using wireless technology. Visitors can use a cell phone or any internet device to hear John Page narrate a “virtual trip” to any buoy location to learn about the Bay in Smith’s time and to plan their own trip along the trail.

February 18:  An Artist’s View of the Battle of the Chesapeake Bay

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents maritime artist Patrick O’Brien on Thursday, February 18, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. In this illustrated lecture, Patrick will discuss how he brings maritime history alive in paint, including the step-by-step process of recreating the Battle of the Chesapeake Bay, a turning point in the Revolutionary War. O’Brien will bring some of his original paintings for closer examination.

February 25:  From this spot, you can see 400 years

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series will feature the unveiling of the Museum’s new interpretive panel project on Thursday, February 28, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Illustrator Phyllis Saroff and graphic designer John Damm have created six original works of art that show the view from the Museum’s docks as it would have looked in 1608, 1672, 1774, 1887, 1919, and 1998, interpreting how these waters and the vessels that sailed on them have shaped Annapolis’ history, from the dugout log canoes of the Native Americans to the round-the-world-race fleet that established Annapolis as “America’s Sailing Capital.”

March 4: Of Crabs and Crabbers

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents local author, editor and Bay spokesman Mick Blackistone on Thursday, March 4, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. He will speak on current efforts under way to restore the blue crab population on the Bay.

The editor of the Watermen’s Gazette and longtime spokesmen for Bay’s commercial and recreational boating industry, Mick Blackistone has most recently been involved with the Blue Crab Advanced Research Consortium, focused on efforts to replenish and preserve the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population.

March 11:  Baltimore’s Free Black Caulkers and the Riots of 1858

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents Baltimore historian Shawn Gladden on Thursday, March 11, from 7-8:30 p.m. He will speak on “Baltimore's Free Black Caulkers and the Riots of 1858.” In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, the bustling town of Baltimore may well have encompassed the largest population of free black Americans in the U.S. Hard-working enterprising laborers, they were highly regarded in the burgeoning shipyards of Fells Point, where they helped build and launch the clipper ships that came to dominate the trade routes of the Atlantic seaboard and beyond. Gladden will examine the role of these freemen in the shipbuilding industry during its peak years.

March 18: Go Terps! Terrapin Institute Restores Maryland’s Official State Reptile

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents Terrapin Institute Co-Director Jeff Popp on Thursday, March 18, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The Terrapin Institute has taught more than 1000 students first-hand about their State Reptile and what it needs to survive. They have raised more than 1200 hatchlings and released them to the wild through their Terrapin Headstart Program. Working with waterfront property landowners throughout the Chesapeake Bay region, they are restoring terrapin nesting habitat one beach at a time and educating the public on terrapin fiendly beach erosion control measures. Jeff will introduce three terrapins that Museum students have been raising this school year, and discuss the many threats that face this iconic bay symbol.

March 25: Meet Chief Winterhawk of the Nause-Waiwash Tribe

The Annapolis Maritime Museum 2010 Seminar Series presents Chief Sewell Winterhawk Fitzhugh, head of the Nause-Waiwash (nah-soo WAY-wash) people, a group of more than 250 based in Dorchester County, Maryland, who are descendants of the original Nanticoke whose home is the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Their name is a reference to two Nanticoke ancestral villages. “We know we’re here,” he says. “We’ve never left. . .We want the state of Maryland and all to acknowledge they didn’t kill us all, that some of us managed to survive." 

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