After class, teacher heads to the Chesapeake

Tag : mesh filters
At the end of almost every one of his weekly senior softball games,the teacher at Poolesville and Seneca Valley high schools takes offhis glove, jumps in his red pickup, and drives three hourssoutheast to his second home in Ridge, a tiny bayside town onMaryland’s Western Shore.
Like a ‘‘peeler” crab climbing out of its hardshell, when he arrives at his cottage on St. Jerome’s Creek,the Adamstown resident removes the skin of his weekday role as ateacher and reveals his commercial-crabbing, charter-captainingparallel life.
Blue-claw duo
One Sunday morning, Smith, 55, geared up Little Miss Molly, his19-foot Larson crabbing boat, and loaded buckets to store the bluecrabs he knew would be clinging to the 11 wire traps he had set theprevious day.
Smith, who has a license for 50 crab pots but never uses more than25, mostly catches the crabs for his family and friends to eat. Hedoes sell some at $115 per bushel to help pay for the gas he usesdriving back and forth to the remote town.
Smith and his 11-year-old son, Joe, got the 85-horsepower boatmotor puttering and pulled out into the short stretch of creekbetween their dock and the vast, awaiting Chesapeake Bay.
As they left the creek, the water turned bluer and rougher. Theydidn’t have to travel far before spotting their first crabpot.
‘‘On your right!” Joe yelled to his dad over thedin of the engine which Smith dropped into neutral as he pulled upalongside the foam float marking the trap.
Joe, who is licensed to drive a boat, went into action, bendingover the gunnel and pulling the pot up and onto the boat.
He opened the door keeping the crabs in their metal cage, anddumped them into a long, shallow trough.
Ten traps and about 20 crabs later, father and son declare thebounty a rare disappointment. The traps had been out for too shorta time to render an impressive harvest.
‘‘We’ve been getting about three-quarters of abushel out of 11 pots, so this isn’t too good a haul,”Smith explained. ‘‘That would be averaging five or sixcrabs per pot.”
That evening, the crabs were steamed in beer, vinegar and theubiquitous Old Bay seasoning, and the succulent meat was so tenderthat the disappointment melted away like so much dipping butter,and a smile graced every diner’s face.
Fishin’ with Miss Molly
A day on the water usually starts early for Captain Dave.
‘‘Sometimes, in the morning, I’ll get up and gofishing and catch two rockfish and be back here drinking coffeebefore the kids even wake up,” said Smith, who has two sons– Joe and Taylor, 14.
He often gets up at the crack of dawn, rising with the pelicans,blue herons and ospreys, and sets out on Miss Molly, his 25-footC-Hawk fishing boat, dodging crab pots and swells in the choppywater as he heads to Point No Point Lighthouse to troll for thefirst catch of the day.
‘‘Here fishy, fishy, fishy, fishy,” he calls frombeneath his gray-blue hat and dark shades when the bites come toorarely.
Taylor joins his dad on many of his fishing trips, and when Smithis busy baiting hooks and giving fishing advice, Taylor often takesthe wheel.
The father-son fishing and chartering team, like Joe andSmith’s crabbing team, is a successful operation, bringing insome money, but it is first and foremost a chance for the two tobond and have fun.
Environmentalismon the half-shell
Smith’s strong affinity for the Chesapeake Bay and itsbountiful seafood began when he was a young college student in the1970s.
‘‘My family is from the Narragansett Bay in RhodeIsland, but we moved out to the Midwest. I didn’t get back tothe water until I came here and went to St. Mary’sCollege,” he said. ‘‘We would go down from thedorms and catch crabs – we called it chicken-necking –and sometimes we’d only catch four or five. That’sreally how I kind of fell in love with it.”
As his love affair with the Bay deepens, Smith is developing aburgeoning sense of environmentalism.
‘‘You look out that window and you see clean water— or relatively clean water — so you want to keep itthat way,” he said.
A quick peek into the murky depths under his wood-planked dock willreveal one of the ways he contributes to the health of the Bay, apursuit which provides both culinary and environmental rewards: hisoyster-raising operation.
‘‘We buy oysters by the thousands when they’re asbig as the nail on my baby finger and we put them in rubber-coatedwire mesh bags. They live in there and they float,” heexplained. ‘‘It takes 18 to 24 months to grow to marketsize. We aren’t commercial so we can’t sell them, so weeat a lot of oysters and throw parties and give them away. But theother advantage is they filter the Bay while they’regrowing.”
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has encouraged oyster gardening foryears, and as Stephanie Reynolds, a Maryland fisheries scientistwith the foundation, says, the benefits to the bay arefar-reaching.
‘‘An oyster is a filter feeder so as it’s eatingit actually filters sediment and algae out of the water – itcleans the water and makes it clearer,” she explained.‘‘Whether the issue is too much sediment or too muchalgae, what you end up with is cloudy water. When the water is toocloudy, the sunlight can’t penetrate very far into it, sogreen plants living on the bottom can’t live because theycan’t get enough sunlight and these plants and grass beds arevery important for many Bay species, including young bluecrabs.”
Smith also shares his sense of reverence for the ChesapeakeBay’s natural environment with students at the schools wherehe teaches — Poolesville and Seneca Valley high schools.
In the 1990s, he started taking them on summer trips fromMontgomery County to places in the Bay’s watershed, where heteaches them about sound environmental practices and how to testfor various pollutants.
The classes give him an outlet to spread his knowledge and passionfor the Bay and the environment, and also to help ensure thatfuture generations understand the importance of good stewardship.
‘‘The thing about teaching people and teaching kidsabout protecting the environment, and showing them that it’snot just a bunch of jabber and you’re actually practicing it,actually trying to keep the Bay clean, is you never know what itcould do,” he said. ‘‘If I could just convinceone kid to do one thing environmentally sound, it will just pass onthese practices, and that’s what I’m trying todo.”
One day, after his children graduate from high school, Smith willretire to his Ridge house, he says. But his family’s livesare in Adamstown and Montgomery County for now, and Smith iscontent being a weekend waterman.