APEX Awards Recognizes Chesapeake Quarterly
Two issues of Chesapeake Quarterly were recognized with 2021 APEX Awards for Publication Excellence for magazines, journals, and tabloids. The “Black on the Bay, Then and Now” issue ( Vol. 20, No. 1 ) won in the electronic category, and the “Groundwater and the Chesapeake Bay” issue ( Vol. 19, No. 1 ) won in the green category. We published these issues on the ArcGIS StoryMaps platform, our first foray into the digital production of Chesapeake Quarterly. The APEX awards honor excellence in communication for nonprofit organizations, universities, and independent businesses.
Our groundwater issue examined how groundwater moves through different regions in Maryland and how saltwater intrusion is affecting farms on the Eastern Shore. We visited scientists at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, to see their on-the-ground research projects that test various ways of reducing the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that enters water supplies. We also talked to Chesapeake Bay Program modelers about how they account for lag time—the decades it can take for groundwater to move through the system before it finally enters the Bay’s tributaries. We went to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory to talk to researchers about how they are tracking chemicals that enter waterways from septic tanks, and we spent time with a researcher looking at what happens when soil bacteria convert nitrogen in fertilizer to atmospheric nitrogen (N₂).
Black on the Bay, Then and Now highlighted the contributions of Maryland’s Black maritime entrepreneurs throughout the Chesapeake Bay’s history as well as today. The issue retraces much of the painful discrimination that Black mariners faced over the past two centuries, and looks to a more inclusive future with the work of Imani Black, a young oyster farmer and UMCES graduate student who started a nonprofit to bring more minorities into aquaculture. We introduce readers to a legacy of Black captains based in Kent Narrows who fill their headboats with customers from Philadelphia, Annapolis, Baltimore, and DC looking to spend a day on the water fishing. We also go back in time to meet the charismatic Capt. George Brown, who ran steamboats between Baltimore and a resort he owned so that Black residents could enjoy the beach and its amusements. The issue also includes sailmakers, crab company entrepreneurs, and pioneering oyster farmers who helped plant the seeds for the industry today.
