Warm, Dry Winter Bringing Chesapeake To Life Early

Crabs are crawling early out of the mud in the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay, and that’s only the beginning of changes expected from the warm, dry winter in the nation’s largest estuary.

“All the animals, whether they be fish or crabs, are going to be doing things a little differently. It’s going to be really interesting,” said Lynn Fegley, deputy director of fisheries at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

The crabs are stirring early in Virginia, rockfish could spawn sooner and algae blooms could be worse than usual because of an extremely mild winter that kept water temperatures above average, scientists and watermen say. Bird watchers, meanwhile, can look forward to earlier arrivals, with many birds arriving one to three weeks early, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

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