The Chesapeake Bay Heritage tour was a tour that we took early into our project. It allowed us to broaden our understanding of the Chesapeake Bay’s history and ecosystem importance, and was an enjoyable, easy start to our project.

 

     We began at the Annapolis Maritime Museum, boarding a skipjack boat in downtown Annapolis. A skipjack was a Chesapeake Bay workboat developed in the late 1800s, especially for dredging oysters in shallow water. It has a shallow draft, a single mast, and two sails, which makes it cheap to build, easy to handle, and well suited to the oyster beds of Maryland. Historically, skipjacks became an important part of Maryland’s maritime culture and were once common on the Bay during the oyster industry’s peak. Now, they’re remembered as the last working sailing fishing fleet in the United States, and Maryland even made the skipjack its state boat in 1985. Learning that the very boat we sat on was so engrained in Maryland’s history was inspiring, and as we learned about the decline of oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay, we were reminded of how interconnected conservation is with so many other subject matters.

 

     The tour also identified many historic places we saw on our ride along the coast, and the tour guides were humorous and engaging as they explained many interesting events to us. We also had the opportunity to see osprey and their nests along the Severn River, which inspired us to pursue photographing them and writing a wildlife article about them later.