Report Cards

The Chesapeake Bay Program issued a comprehensive Snapshot of Chesapeake Bay: How's It Doing?  Comeback reports include coverage of the striped bass (which has surged far ahead of restoration goals), bald eagle (no longer endangered), and shad.  Though bay grasses are recovering, habitat loss is hurting some species (e.g. red headed ducks).  Industrial chemical releases dropped by 66% between 1988 and 1995.  Nutrient pollution has also declined in several respects, but "we still need to do more" to meet Year 2000 goals. URL: www.chesapeakebay.net/bayprogram.

Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shark populations have plummeted by as much as 85 percent over the last 20 years, reported Merry Camhi, staff scientist at  the National Audubon Society's Living Oceans Program.  Among the causes are overfishing, especially in coastal and estuarine waters where sharks bear and raise their young but are unprotected by federal rules that do not apply inshore.  Camhi's report, Sharks on the Line, rates the states for the quality of their shark fishery management programs.  Of Atlantic coastal states, Florida ranked tops with tougher restrictions than the federal ones.  At the bottom: New Jersey, which has no shark management program.  To receive a free copy of the report (a $5 donation is requested to cover mailing costs), E-mail ppaladines@audubon.org

Rhode Island's Save the Bay issued a new The Good, the Bad & The Ugly report rating the 1996-97 performance of sewage treatment plants in the Narragansett Bay watershed.  The report notes improvements: a 70% reduction in bio-chemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids since 1983; a 51% decline in chlorine discharges since 1993; toxic metals down 52% since 1992. Nutrient pollution has also dropped slightly.  But, the report warns, major trouble spots remain in the region.  Treatment plants are aging and subject to leakage and inadequate maintenance.  And heavy rains last spring drew attention to "the importance of sewage treatment plant performance, especially during adverse weather conditions." URL: www.savethebay.org./news/goodbadugly.html.

Recently released by the World Resources Institute (WRI), in partnership with several international organizations, is Reefs at Risk: A Map-based Indicator of Threats to the World's Coral Reefs, the first assessment of this sort.   The report's Tropical Americas map reveals high or moderate threats to almost all reefs in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, and Jamaica (95% of whose reefs are dead or dying according to a recent University of the West Indies assessment).  The WRI report rates the threats to Florida Keys reefs as generally moderate, the Bahamas low to moderate, and Cuba a mix from low to high. Notably, the report says little about the new suggested correlations between reef bleaching and water temperatures that have risen in some key areas as a result of El Nino events and global warming. URL: www.wri.org/indictrs/reefrisk.htm