Readings on benthic organisms and communities

1. Readings in class handout.

2. Pages from the World Wide Web:

        General

• Chesapeake Bay Program Benthic Data
• State of the Bay, 1995: Benthos
• Benthic communities in the Chesapeake Bay
• Benthos: what bottom dwellers tell us about the Bay
• Mussel watch project and benthic surveillance project in Chesapeake Bay
• Role of benthic suspension feeders in maintaining estuarine water quality
• Cownose rays: predators and their impact on the benthic community

• The New Oyster Wars: Battling Disease in the Lab and Bay
• Formidable Foes
• Legislating to Fight Disease: the Oyster Disease Research Program
• A Question of Survival: Helping Oysters Overcome Disease
• Oysters and the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem
• Haplosporidia
• Maryland Sea Grant Research: Oyster Disease Research Program
• Maryland's historic oyster bottom
• The Paynter Lab at University of Maryland College Park - research on oysters

      Blue Crabs

• Blue Crab Facts
• Blue Crab life cycle
• The Blue Crab Education Page
• Spotlight On Research: The Blue Crab in Winter
• Side bar: The Battle over Blue Crabs: Capping the Last Great Fishery
• Blue Crabs: The Biology of Abundance
• Counting Crabs
• Spotlight on Fisheries: Banking on Blue Crabs - A Trial Run for Peelers
• The Summer of '96: Maryland Blue Crab Regulations
• DNR - saving the blue crab
• Crab anatomy (from Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences)
• Crabbing - All About Blue Crabs
• THE BLUE CRAB HOME PAGE
• Blue Crab Archives
• News articles about blue crabs and the fishery
 
• Blue crab survey raises questions about stock's health (1995)
• Review panel finds no evidence that the blue crab is overfished (1996)
• Management plan for blue crab fishery
• Chesapeake Bay has worst blue crab harvest on record in 1998
• Bay's Blue Crabs Overfished Since Late '80s, Study Says (Sept 1998)
• Executive summary of September 1998 report on crab stocks and overfishing
• Scientists, watermen see big decline in crab population (May 1999)