But O’Neil isn’t there to study the grasses, so much as a perplexing invader in their midst called microseira, which is growing more and more prevalent there.

Located offshore of Havre de Grace, the Flats lie at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, the bay’s largest tributary. Estimated at over 10,600 acres in 2023, the sprawling bed of submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, is a key habitat for underwater creatures — and a critical sink for harmful sediments and nutrients rushing down the Susquehanna.

That’s what makes it such a key area for research. O’Neil, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, visited in August with a host of other researchers and summer interns, along with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Each team collected data about the grasses, including species like wild celery and water stargrass. But O’Neil was focused on the algae-like mats of microseira, embedded in the sediment beneath the spiny green grasses.

Known by the name lyngbya until a recent change, microseira is a type of cyanobacteria, a photosynthesizing bacteria that grows in clumps on the bottom. And as the season progresses, it grows up onto the grasses, in search of sunlight, and sometimes floats in unsightly mats on the water’s surface.

“In Australia, they call it mermaid’s hair,” O’Neil said. “But we always joke that we don’t want to meet that mermaid.”

Closely related cyanobacteria appear in tropical environments like Hawaii and Australia. But Maryland researchers first noticed it in the Flats in 2004, after watermen complained that the mats were clinging to their fishing gear. In recent years, its footprint has appeared to increase, O’Neil said, and warming waters due to climate change could add more fuel.

But the impact of the microseira on the Flats remains unclear. For the time being, the cyanobacteria doesn’t appear to be slowing the growth of the Chesapeake’s largest grass bed.

The recovery of the Flats from near-decimation in the 1970s is an oft-cited success story for the bay, at a time when the restoration effort has fewer items in the win column than bay officials would have hoped when they signed the latest recovery agreement in 2014.

That agreement calls for a total of 185,000 acres of underwater grasses in the bay, but the latest estimate from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which tracks the figure annually, indicated there were 82,937 acres in the 2023 season — a considerable improvement compared to 2019’s figures, after rainy conditions buried grasses bay-wide, but well short of the goal.

That 2014 bay agreement also came with a 2025 deadline for states surrounding the Chesapeake to reduce their loads of nutrients and sediment runoff into the bay. While some states met their obligations or will come close, others remain far off the mark, meaning the overall effort will fall short.

A committee convened by Chesapeake Bay Program leaders unveiled its recommendations earlier this year for the future of the bay agreement. The committee called on governors of the bay states to recommit to the agreement, as scientists and other stakeholders figure out a new timeline for some of its goals, and new targets for others.

The latest science, in the form of a comprehensive evaluation released in May 2023, emphasizes the importance of shallow-water habitats like the Flats. In the bay’s deep trench, reductions in nutrients and sediments haven’t spawned the expected increases in dissolved oxygen levels. Whereas these improvements are arriving faster in shallow areas, particularly when underwater vegetation returns, providing habitat for crabs and fish.

In the Flats these days, that mysterious microseira is hardly difficult to find. Floating amid the grasses, O’Neil ducks underwater with her hand outstretched, and swims for the bottom. Her flippers dangle in the air for a moment, before she reappears, holding a fistful of the muddy, filamentous substance yanked from the grass bed.

Researchers believe the microseira is largely fed by nutrients in the water and legacy phosphorus in the sediment of the Flats.

In other habitats, such as Florida and Australia, similar cyanobacteria has crowded out aquatic vegetation, leading to declines. But the same story doesn’t seem to be playing out in the Chesapeake, said Brooke Landry, who focuses on SAV as program chief for living resources assessment at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources.

“By August, there’s just a lot of it. It covers hundreds of acres in the bed,” Landry said. “It’s like: How is this not having a negative impact? And we’ll go and we’ll look around, and the grass underneath looks bright green and happy.”

The health of the Flats could be the reason, O’Neil said. The grasses in the Flats can grow up to 6 feet long, often reaching the surface, so the microseira cannot completely cover the grasses and block the sunlight. In other environments, such as Florida’s, the grasses can’t grow as high, sometimes because of hungry marine species such as turtles and manatees, O’Neil said.

But microseira has plenty of weapons in its arsenal, including an ability to “fix” nitrogen — or take in nitrogen from the atmosphere and use it for growth, something that algae cannot do. Therefore, simply reducing the amount of nutrient runoff into the water wouldn’t stop the microseira.

“I don’t want people to think that keeping nutrients out is not a good idea, because it is,” O’Neil said. “But there are other mitigation strategies that have been used in other places to save the seagrass, including harvesting [the microseira].”

In tropical environments like the Hawaiian and Australian shorelines, some types of lyngbya have been a documented cause of “stinging seaweed disease,” in humans, causing skin, eye and respiratory irritation because of the toxins they produce.

But the microseira found in the Flats creates different toxins that do not pose the same threat to people, said Cathy Wazniak, DNR’s program manager of coastal integrated assessment.

“It’s not a human health threat, because you have to ingest these things, and I don’t think anybody’s making a salad out of that benthic mat,” Wazniak said. “But there are animal implications, maybe ecosystem implications.”

Scientists still are trying to determine the impacts of the toxins, Wazniak said. They’ve found one in tiny zooplankton living on the mats, but it remains unclear whether the toxin is passing up the food chain to other organisms, and what effects it may have, Wazniak said.

Globally, cyanobacteria appear to be growing more plentiful, and spreading to new regions, as climate change warms underwater ecosystems, O’Neil said.

“It’s not just occurring here. The species that we work with in the marine environment, that used to be confined to Florida, I’m now finding in Cape Cod,” O’Neil said.

The microseira research is just one chapter in the evolving history of the Susquehanna Flats.

A pivotal moment came in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes, a generational storm, sent powerful floodwaters rushing down the Susquehanna, wiping out the Flats.

Back then, the storm felt like the “nail in the coffin” for the Flats, said Cassie Gurbisz, associate professor of marine science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

“The SAV was gone from the Flats for like 30 years — and then all of the sudden, in the early 2000s, it came back,” Gurbisz said.

That resurgence was the focus of Gurbisz’s dissertation. She determined that several factors came together to make it happen. Nutrient reductions, including from the ban of phosphates in detergent, and a dry spell in the bay region, created a “window of opportunity” for the grasses to regain a foothold at the mouth of the Susquehanna. And once the grasses passed a certain tipping point, the bed’s growth was exponential.

“It’s kind of like this runaway train. We call it positive feedback,” Gurbisz said. “The plants clear up the water, and that means they’re getting more light, and then they can grow even more, and clear up the water even more, and get even more light.”

The result is a strengthened ecosystem that can better withstand threats, like 2011’s Hurricane Lee, 2018’s heavy rains and other influxes of nutrient pollution.

For observers, that means a lush underwater meadow, visible from a boat when the waters are shallow, but enchanting from behind a dive mask, surrounded by swaying sprigs of green.

“I harp to my friends and neighbors all the time about how amazing the Chesapeake Bay is, and SAV. But still, their perception of getting in the water in the bay is just like ‘ick,’” Landry said. “The fact [is] that there are these beautiful areas, where the water is crystal clear.”

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission voted 5-4 on Tuesday to repeal a prohibition on a winter dredge fishery for blue crabs, a ban that’s been in place for about 15 years. As a result, staff members at the commission will explore reestablishing a winter fishery for the species.

Historically, the winter season allowed watermen at the mouth of the Chesapeake to dredge the bay bottom, scooping up semi-dormant crabs buried beneath the mud for warmth during the coldest months of the year. The practice was halted in the 2000s as the crab population faltered.

In a statement, Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said Virginia’s decision was ill-advised and poorly timed.

“A decision of this magnitude should have only been made with the support of scientists, in close consultation with Maryland officials, and in response to a significant increase in the blue crab population,” Kurtz wrote.

“It’s a bad day if you care about blue crabs.”

The latest blue crab survey from this winter found blue crab abundance held fairly steady in the Chesapeake Bay relative to 2023, but that the number was still below average. Continued low numbers of juvenile crabs have prompted concern, and the number of female crabs in the bay this winter (estimated at 133 million) was below a target of 196 million crabs.

Staff members of the Virginia commission recommended against reopening the winter season. In a presentation, they highlighted that during the 1998-1999 winter dredge harvest in Virginia, harvesters removed about 32% of the total female crabs estimated to be in the bay when the season began. About 96% of the crabs caught during that winter season were female.

Maintaining the stock of female crabs is considered critical to the species’ longevity, and much of the fishing regulations focus on protecting them. The first-ever bushel limits for male crabs came in 2022, after worrisome survey results for the species. The 2022 survey estimated the lowest number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake in any one year since the effort began in 1990.

Environmental groups opposed to the winter season, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, argue that although the crab numbers have rebounded since then, the population remains too shaky to give more leeway to harvesters.

Zach Widgeon, a spokesman for the commission, called its decision “very preliminary,” since it does not actually establish the winter fishery, adding that it isn’t time to sound any alarms.

The vote allows commission staff to explore the viability of a winter fishery that could begin as soon as this winter, if approved. At the commission’s next meeting in September, the staff members will present their findings, Widgeon said.

It’s very likely that, if a winter fishery is reestablished, it will differ from the winter seasons 15 years ago, Widgeon said. Historically, the dredge season ran from Dec. 1 to March 31, but it could be shorter this time around. Some stakeholders have suggested a January-February season, Widgeon said, to help sustain crab-picking houses during the winter.

“This is not the winter dredge that it was in 2008,” Widgeon said.

It’s also likely that a dredge season will include fewer participants, meaning it would not remove as many crabs as the 1998 season, Widgeon said.

“While this historical data is useful in evaluating the full scale of effort during the historical winter dredge fishery, current viability will be determined using current data and harvest targets in line with bay-wide management goals,” Widgeon wrote in an email.

Even so, the prospect of reopening the winter dredge harvest for blue crabs has attracted concern. Of the 186 individuals and groups that shared comments with the commission about the idea, all 186 were against it.

In 2008, when the Chesapeake Bay blue crab came under a federal fishery disaster declaration due to dire population numbers, Virginia’s winter dredge fishery was seen as “one of the biggest culprits” to remove to help the species recover, said Allison Colden, Maryland executive director of the bay foundation, which also released a statement Tuesday condemning Virginia’s decision.

Reinstating the season now, with the blue crab stock unsteady again, seems like a poor decision, Colden said.

“Based on all the information we had going into today’s meeting, it was entirely expected and logical that this would not move forward, considering all of the recommendations and sentiments against it,” Colden said.

The decision is also poorly timed, argued Kurtz in his statement, because officials are beginning a comprehensive stock assessment for the blue crab. It will explore the reasons for lower-than-hoped juvenile and female numbers, and evaluate new environmental stressors such as warming waters and ravenous invasive blue catfish.

“The success of the species’ recovery after a steep decline in the 2000s can be directly traced to Maryland and Virginia cooperatively managing blue crabs, especially females, based on science,” Kurtz wrote. “Today’s action by Virginia breaks with this successful approach.”

The approximately 450-ton section of truss sat Monday morning at a processing yard at Tradepoint Atlantic in Baltimore County, where orange sparks flew as workers sawed at the steel. Minutes later, a clawlike pair of shears attached to an excavator tugged on a weakened steel member, folding an entire triangular section of truss onto the ground.

“To date, this is the largest single lift of steel that we’ve had,” said James Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority. “When they brought it in yesterday, they actually had to cut it in half, because it was about 90 feet tall. So in order to make it manageable for the crews working in the processing yard, they cut it down.”

Officials estimate that a total of 50,000 short tons of debris are sitting in the Patapsco River, blocking access to the shipping channel that leads to the Port of Baltimore. The debris is steadily coming ashore in Sparrows Point, and once it’s cut down, it will be sent to local recycling companies.

Though there’s still a mountain to climb, the weekend’s operation to bring the large piece ashore is yet another milestone, said Navy Capt. Sal Suarez, the service’s supervisor of salvage and diving.

“Getting through all that, it worked out the way that it was planned. You’re a little bit ahead — a day ahead — of schedule,” Suarez said. “So it was, I don’t want to say celebratory, but it’s moving in the right direction. Everybody’s happy about that.”

Divers spent “days” studying and working on the portion of the bridge truss that was submerged in the Patapsco, Suarez said. Beneath the water, crews used a diamond wire saw to cut it into a manageable section, then attached rigging so that the massive Chesapeake 1000 crane could pull its first bridge piece out of the water and all the way to shore. The successful lift was a relief, Suarez said.

“They were pretty sure they had cut all the trusses — turns out they did — but if they had missed one, they would have had to stop the lift, go back down and cut the other truss,” he said.

The piece also may have been several hundred tons heavier, Suarez said, but chunks of the roadway fell to the bottom, rather than coming up with the steel.

Meanwhile, crews still are working to refloat the Dali, the giant cargo ship that toppled the bridge with more than 1,000 containers aboard, bound for Sri Lanka.

So far, they have removed about 40 containers, said Joseph Farrell, CEO of Resolve Marine, the maritime salvage contractor assigned to the Dali. Resolve believes it will need to remove about 140 containers to refloat the ship.

The ship has power, but the bow thruster isn’t operational, Farrell said. The crash severed electrical wiring tied to the bow thruster, a propeller-shaped system that helps maneuver the ship at lower speeds, and crews are hoping to bring the thruster back online.

“If we can, it’s a bonus,” Farrell said. “We don’t need it. It just helps, not having to have a tug [boat] up on that bow during the refloat.”

The plan is for tugboats to eventually guide the Dali back into a berth at the Port of Baltimore, Farrell said.

Meanwhile, members of the ship’s crew remain on board, completing their “day jobs” by keeping the ship running, Farrell said.

Monday, news broke that the FBI had boarded the ship, and had begun a criminal investigation into the crash, alongside investigations already underway by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard.

Since the collapse March 26, dive teams have battled difficult conditions, said Robyn Bianchi, an assistant salvage master at New Jersey-based Donjon Marine Co. who has been working on the site.

Among the biggest struggles, she said, has been poor visibility in the murky Patapsco, caused by the ebb and flow of tides, which continually stir up muck at the collapse site.

From inside a “dive shack” on a barge at the collapse site, Bianchi said she can view video footage directly from the divers — but it doesn’t show much.

“A lot of the time, it’s probably right up to here,” said Bianchi, holding her hand about a foot from her face.

There’s also the challenge of navigating an underwater environment strewn with debris, including chunks of concrete and rebar that could snag a diver’s breathing tube, which they refer to as an “umbilical,” Bianchi said.

On top of it all, there is the emotional weight of diving at the site, where six people lost their lives. One of Bianchi’s salvage divers located human remains during a dive, she said, one of the four bodies that have been pulled from the river so far.

The diver came to the surface, and helped direct Maryland State Police divers to the body, Bianchi said.

“If we can try and help our divers, who are going to be on this project for a long time, not to have to really see that, something that is going to have a mental effect on them, we try and keep that out,” Bianchi said.

“It’s not something that we do often,” she said. “But salvage divers are prepared for that.”

Their work was both essential and easy to overlook: a construction crew on a midnight shift making road repairs on the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

But for a cargo ship striking the bridge March 26 and plunging the massive span and the crew into the Patapsco River, they likely would have remained hidden in plain sight, part of an immigrant workforce in a country eager for their labor but not for fixing a system that keeps many from becoming citizens.

Six workers died: Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera. Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes. Carlos Hernandez. Miguel Luna. José Mynor López. Maynor Suazo Sandoval.

The families they left behind in Mexico and Central America and those they built in the Baltimore area are now reuniting in mourning after years of living apart and in a kind of limbo: The men worked here, but also supported family there; they created new lives here, but their immigration status remained murky and subject to political vagaries.

It’s unclear where the men fell on the spectrum of immigration status, not uncommon given the fractured immigration system in which rules vary with individual circumstances and the process of achieving citizenship is complicated and restrictive, even for those who have worked here legally for years or even decades.

For construction workers — almost 40% of whom are immigrants in the Baltimore-Washington area, according to one university research center — the disconnect can be particularly jarring.

“I mean, they are building America, quite literally,” said Tom Perez, a senior White House advisor and former Maryland and U.S. labor secretary.

“They’re building bridges, they’re building roads, they’re building buildings,” he said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. “And they don’t have that bridge to citizenship yet, even though they can work and they’ve been here for 30 years and their kids are U.S. citizens.”

Still, even during these devastating days, friends and family of the bridge victims and other immigrants say the U.S. remains the same beacon that it’s been for centuries for wave upon wave of immigrants fleeing the likes of war, violence and poverty.

“Making the decision wasn’t easy; it was hard, hard, the hardest,” said Carlos Alexis Suazo Sandoval, whose brother, Maynor,  died in the bridge collapse, speaking in Spanish. “But the search for a dream of a better life brought us to the United States.

“The only country that gives us a solution is the United States,” he added. “It’s a country that is pretty and wonderful for us.”

In a well-worn tradition, Carlos followed Maynor here from their hometown of Azacualpa in western Honduras, leaving what he said was government corruption that left a dearth of opportunity.

He stayed with a nephew and his brother, who helped him find work, until he could get his own apartment in the same Owings Mills complex. Their sister, Norma, immigrated several years ago, as well, and lives about five minutes away.

On Friday, 10 days after the disaster, Maynor’s body was recovered from the wreckage of the bridge. But three other families anxiously awaited the recovery of their loved ones’ bodies. Divers had recovered earlier the bodies of Hernandez Fuentes, the crew foreman and a native of Mexico who lived in Essex, and Castillo Cabrera, a Dundalk resident originally from Guatemala.

A day after the bridge collapse, Perez, who has become a point man for Democratic President Joe Biden on Key Bridge recovery efforts, spent what he called a “very gut-wrenching two hours” with the men’s families at a response command center.

“How can we help?” said Perez, relaying an exchange with one particularly inconsolable woman.

“‘El cuerpo, el cuerpo, el cuerpo,’” he said she told him, “which is Spanish for [the] ‘body.’”

A port city

A port city, Baltimore has long drawn immigrants to its shores, with Locust Point in South Baltimore among the busiest points of entry in the 19th century after Ellis Island in New York. Among them, Perez notes, was an ancestor of Biden, who visited the scene Friday.

As earlier immigrants watch the news unfold about the workers lost in the bridge collapse, they say they see a mirror of their own journeys but with a difference wrought by time.

“We came for a goal. It’s painful to see that our people in the United States died in the attempt to achieve the dream that they were following,” said Maria Alvarado, who owns Diner Latino in Highlandtown and Middle River, speaking in Spanish.

Alvarado was the last of her seven siblings to leave El Salvador, arriving in 1998, driven away by crime that made it dangerous to walk on the streets after dark and so few work opportunities that she took three buses for a distant job.

Once here, she benefited from those who preceded her, particularly in the 1980s when many Salvadorans fled a civil war in which tens of thousands were killed or disappeared. They had stable jobs, and a fairly smooth path to citizenship at a time when, under Republican President Ronald Reagan, a sweeping immigration reform measure made millions who had entered prior to 1982 eligible for amnesty.

That was then, though, a time before immigration policy became a political hot button, subject to loud debates but little practical action to fix the citizenship process, which one immigration expert says is restrictive and complicated.

“It’s not like going to the MVA to get your license,” said Elizabeth Keyes, a University of Baltimore law professor. “You have to fit into a category that the United States Congress has said is a priority for immigration, and those categories are pretty limited, and the ones that are more open have long waiting lines or really complicated processes.”

Additionally, “there’s no visa available just because people have spent a certain amount of time here, and it’s not even automatic if you have U.S. citizen children.”

Therefore she and others say, even immigrants who have proper work permits are left in a state of fear, wary of drawing attention to themselves or asking for help even when they are entitled to it lest it jeopardize a future or ongoing application for a more permanent status.

As a result, said Gustavo Torres, executive director of the immigrant rights group CASA, the potential for exploitation is ever present.

“Some employers feel that because you are undocumented, you are not going to complain, you are not going to defend your rights,” he said.

Maybe they don’t get paid, or they get injured, Torres said, but they don’t report it or seek help for fear of being fired.

“They decide not to go to the hospital,” he said. “It’s that simple: They are very scared.”

Bringing home the bodies

For those mourning the loss of loved ones in the bridge collapse, the fractious political debate over immigration is likely distant noise.

Instead, they are working on such details as how to get family members in home countries to Maryland for funerals, or how to arrange for transport for burial overseas.

Perez said he has put family members in touch with staff “at the highest levels” of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who will help them seek humanitarian parole that would allow a relative to travel here for a funeral.

“We have people literally on standby to help,” he said.

The family of Castillo Cabrera, who is from San Luis in the department of Petén in Guatemala, said they want to bring him home for burial, Perez said. The repatriation process is one with which he is “very familiar,” he said, as his own parents, immigrants from the Dominican Republic, similarly wanted to be buried in their birth country.

According to the Guatemalan consulate, the family of another victim, López, similarly have asked for his body to be returned to his home country. He is from Camotán in the Chiquimula department.

After Suazo Sandoval’s body was recovered Friday, his brother said his family plans to bury him in Honduras, where his mother lives.

Other families have decided to bury the men in the place where they spent their final years.

The family of Hernandez Fuentes, the foreman of the Brawner Builders crew, said they want him buried in the U.S., where he had children and had built a life after more than 15 years here, said Carlos Escalante Igual, the general director of migrant assistance for the Mexican state of Veracruz.

Hernandez Fuentes was from Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, whose government is trying to help his sister obtain a visa to travel to the U.S. to say goodbye, Escalante Igual said.

The crew foreman is related to another man who perished in the bridge collapse, Carlos Hernandez, and brother-in-law of another worker, Adrian Julio Cervantes, who was rescued and survived. Hernandez and Cervantes came from the Mexican state of Mihoacán.

Sheela Murthy, an immigration attorney based in Baltimore County, said permission to travel to the U.S. for a funeral is difficult, particularly for those from poorer countries. Officials fear the travelers will take the opportunity to just stay, she said.

But the amount of attention from elected officials and the public could make it easier for relatives of the those who died in the bridge collapse, she said.

“There is a process. There is a system,” Murthy said. “But they’ll probably walk it through, and make it much faster.”

‘An environment of anguish’

At a certain point, life in El Salvador became untenable, a friend of Miguel Luna told The Sun.

“We lived in an environment of anguish,” said Alvaro Lizama, speaking in Spanish. “We left for work, and we didn’t know whether we’d be able to come back home.”

Gangs had taken over, demanding payment to leave or enter the cities and threatening physical violence, he said.

“The gangs — more than anyone — they hurt the hardworking people,” he said.

Lizama and Luna played together on the Once Berlinés pro soccer club in the city of Berlín, in the department of Usultán in eastern El Salvador.

Shortly after Lizama retired from the team, in 2005, he decided to take the same path as his friend and leave for the U.S. He lives in California, while Luna moved to Maryland to build a new life. A skilled welder, Luna also ran a Salvadoran food truck with his wife and helped care for children and grandchildren.

These days, Lizama said, his home country is in better shape, and the two sons he left behind as boys are now young adults who decided to stay there and complete their studies.

Lizama hasn’t seen them in person since he left for the U.S., instead making do with video and phone calls, and taking comfort in the funds he sends back to his family.

He works as a delivery driver.

“Nobody wants to say it, but we are the workforce that this country needs. For any job, because there we are,” Lizama said. “We never say no.”

Six construction workers are thought to have perished after the Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, smashed into a key support column and sent the bridge and the roadway workers on it into the Patapsco River.

The night shift crew began working in the evening March 25, filling potholes on Interstate 695. After a mayday from the ship early the next morning, police officers successfully halted car traffic onto the bridge moments before it fell, but warnings didn’t make it to most of the workers in time.

A seventh member of the Brawner Builders crew was rescued and treated at a hospital. A bridge inspector also survived.

Baltimore’s Latino community is grieving the six lives lost as it rallies around the families. For some, the men’s deaths symbolize the sacrifices many Latin American immigrants make when they work dangerous jobs in the United States to improve their families’ futures.

The men who died came from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The youngest were in their 20s, while the eldest was a 49-year-old grandfather.

Miguel Luna, 49

Luna, who was from the town of California in El Salvador, immigrated to the United States about 19 years ago, according to CASA, a nonprofit supporting immigrants of which Luna was a member.

He became a welder and lived in Glen Burnie. When he wasn’t working construction, he often cooked alongside his wife, who operates a food truck called Pupuseria Y Antojitos Carmencita Luna, based in Glen Burnie. Friends described Luna as a hardworking “family man,” who had three children, and also was a grandfather. One friend reminisced about their time playing professional soccer together in El Salvador as young men, adding that Luna was a skilled defender.

Miguel Luna, victim of Key Bridge collapse, was a kindhearted family man from El Salvador

Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Fuentes, 35

Hernandez was the foreman of the crew working on the bridge that night. Former coworkers described him as a “fireball” who took his job seriously, and climbed the ranks at Brawner Builders, going from a laborer to driving a company truck.

Hernandez was a devout Christian, who often encouraged his coworkers to turn on religious radio stations as they drove from job to job. Hernandez, who was born in Mexico and lived in Essex, left behind a wife and four children. His body was found last week submerged in the Patapsco, in a red pickup truck. Hernandez’s brother-in-law Julio was part of the crew working on the bridge March 26 but survived the collapse, a former coworker said.

Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, foreman of crew killed in Key Bridge collapse, was devout father of four

Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 38

The youngest of eight siblings, Suazo Sandoval grew up in Azacualpa, Honduras. He immigrated to the United States more than 17 years ago, and often sent money back to his hometown, even sponsoring a soccer league. He had a wife and two children and lived in Owings Mills.

Skilled with machinery, he dreamed of starting his own business one day, according to CASA, of which Suazo Sandoval was a member. In his spare time, Suazo Sandoval loved visiting parks and beaches with his wife and young daughter, said his brother Carlos, who took to the Patapsco River the Friday after the collapse to observe the wreckage and sent videos to his family members.

On April 5, the Unified Command confirmed divers had recovered Suazo Sandoval’s body.

Awaiting closure, Maynor Suazo Sandoval’s family remembers him as a happy provider

Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26

Born in Guatemala, Castillo Cabrera lived in the Baltimore area. Relatives living at a Dundalk address listed for him said they were not ready to speak to reporters. A friend named Melvin Ruiz, of Baltimore, told The Baltimore Sun that Castillo Cabrera was a kind person with a joyous sense of humor.

Castillo Cabrera routinely volunteered to drive fellow crew members to work and other members of Baltimore’s Latino community to the store or to various appointments as needed, Ruiz said.

“He was a genuinely selfless person,” Ruiz said.

Elba Yanez, who cut his hair at a Patapsco Avenue barber shop, described him as sweet. Castillo’s body was recovered last week in the submerged truck, alongside Alex Hernandez. He was originally from San Luis, Petén, according to the Consulate General of Guatemala in Maryland.

Jose Mynor Lopez, in his 30s

Lopez, described as a loving family man and an attentive father, emigrated to the United States 19 years ago from Guatemala in order to create better opportunities for his family.

He had four children, including a young daughter, his uncle Wilmer Raul Orellana said. His wife worked at Owls Corner Cafe in Dundalk, according to his friend and former coworker Melvin Ruiz. A co-owner of the cafe set up a GoFundMe to raise money for his family.

For much of his time in the U.S., Lopez worked in Virginia for Marksmen, a Baltimore bridge repair and marine construction company. Lopez had taken a job with Brawner and moved to the Baltimore about a year ago. He lived in Dundalk.

Carlos Hernandez

Other news outlets have identified Carlos Hernandez as one of the victims who died on the bridge. The Mexican embassy told The Sun that three Mexicans were working on the bridge when it collapsed, including the man who survived. The Mexican state of Michoacán told CNN that the three Mexican men — Carlos Hernandez, Alejandro Hernandez, and Julio — were related to one another.

Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan M. Pitts contributed to this article.

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval’s name. The Sun regrets the error.

Six members of the crew — fathers, husbands and at least one grandfather — did not return to their families in Baltimore, Dundalk, Owings Mills and Glen Burnie when the sun rose Tuesday over the wreckage of the collapsed Key Bridge.

On Wednesday, divers found the bodies of two men, identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk, inside a red pickup truck. Fuentes was from Mexico and Cabrera from Guatemala.

The Latino workers were on the bridge’s middle span when a container ship hit its support column and sent the expanse plummeting into the Patapsco River early Tuesday morning.

After a mayday from the ship, a Singapore-flagged vessel named Dali, police hurriedly closed off the bridge to traffic, but the construction crew from Hunt Valley-based Brawner, who were filling potholes on the roadway, couldn’t escape.

A Maryland state highway inspector and one construction worker survived, but four others who plunged into the icy depths of the river haven’t been found as the recovery effort continued.

Three of the men were originally from Mexico, one of whom was rescued with injuries but has been released from the hospital, according to the Mexican embassy. The remaining workers were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Authorities have yet to officially name the other four victims, but CASA, a nonprofit supporting immigrants, said that two were members: Maynor Suazo Sandoval, who emigrated from Honduras 17 years ago, and Miguel Luna, who has lived in the U.S. for 19 years. Luna’s friends and neighbors in Glen Burnie described him as a sweet and hardworking grandfather who forged friendships despite language barriers.

“His brother describes Maynor as having a true virtue for all things machinery. Maynor dreamt of starting his own small business in the Baltimore area,” read a Wednesday news release from CASA. “He was always so full of joy, and brought so much humor to our family.”

Suazo Sandoval was a husband and father of two. The family was gearing up for his birthday celebration on April 27, CASA said.

Latino Racial Justice Circle, a faith-based organization in the Baltimore area, set up a GoFundMe to raise money for the families of the six missing workers. The online fundraiser had already brought in more than $70,000 in donations by 5 p.m. Wednesday, exceeding its $60,000 goal.

“We know that the 6 victims were all Latino immigrants who were supporting partners and children in the Southeast Baltimore and Dundalk communities. As they move forward with their shock and grief, the families will need support with basic needs, such as rent, groceries, and utilities,” the fundraiser page said.

Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president of Brawner Builders said in a Wednesday interview at the company’s Hunt Valley headquarters that colleagues were taking the news hard. “We’re doing everything we can to assist the families, but you can’t bring somebody back when they’re gone,” Pritzker said.

Many people don’t realize how dangerous road construction can be for workers, he said. Between 2003 and 2020, more than 2,200 workers died at road construction sites, an average of 123 per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Brawner takes precautions to protect its workers from traffic and other hazards, Pritzker said, but the collapse was unexpected and catastrophic. “Who could ever have foreseen something like that happening?” he said.

Bobby Knutson Jr., a construction worker from Northern Virginia who worked at Brawner for about five years, said he and his crewmates sometimes worried about cars crossing the bridge while they were working, or falling from the span. But the massive container ships leaving the Port of Baltimore and traveling under the bridge were mostly exciting to behold, he said.

“The last thing we ever thought about was a boat hitting the bridge. It just blows my mind,” Knutson said.

Knutson said he knew several of the crew members who were on the bridge when it fell, including Luna and Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez, who was originally from Mexico, and rose through the ranks at Brawner to become a foreman.

“When I had met him, he was a laborer — didn’t have a company truck,” Knutson said. “And then by the time I left, he had the company truck and his own crew, which I thought was really cool.”

Hernandez was “attached at the hip” with his brother-in-law, Julio, who Knutson believes was rescued from the collapse and sent to R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. He was released later in the day Tuesday.

Hernandez was a “fireball,” Knutson said. He was short in stature, but his big personality made it feel like he could be 7 feet tall, Knutson said.

“He was the nicest guy ever, but you didn’t want to get on his bad side, because he took no crap from anybody,” Knutson said.

A massive container ship adrift at 9 mph issued a “mayday” early Tuesday as it headed toward the iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge, losing power before colliding with one of the vital support columns. As the 984-foot vessel struck the bridge in the middle of an otherwise calm night, it caused a din that woke people ashore and immediately toppled an essential mid-Atlantic thoroughfare into the frigid waters.

The effects were immediate and catastrophic: Authorities began searching for six construction workers who had been repairing potholes on the Interstate 695 bridge at the time of the collapse. By Tuesday evening, their employer said they were presumed dead, and the Coast Guard said it was ending rescue efforts.

Citizens and officials mourned — Mt. Olive Baptist Church of Turner Station in Dundalk hosted an interfaith prayer vigil Tuesday evening — while working to pick up the pieces from a catastrophe that reverberated up and down the East Coast, as well as around the U.S. and the world. One of three paths across Baltimore’s harbor had been destroyed and, in the same motion, a major shipping channel was obstructed by the very steel that had safely guided thousands of commuters across it the day before.

Despite promises from President Joe Biden that the federal government will pay for a new bridge, state and federal officials couldn’t say how long that would take. But it was clear the devastation, traffic detours and impact on commerce will be long-lasting.

The ship, a Singapore-flagged vessel named Dali with thousands of containers on it, departed the Port of Baltimore around 1 a.m., then quickly ran into trouble. It’s unknown what, precisely, caused the collision at 1:27 a.m., but the ship reported losing power just before it struck the bridge. The National Transportation and Safety Board is investigating the accident — which authorities said does not appear to be intentional nor an act of terrorism — but had not boarded the vessel to collect evidence, such as recorders, as of Tuesday afternoon.

It did not want to disturb the more pressing matter: search efforts led by the U.S. Coast Guard. But Tuesday night, Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said the rescue efforts would be suspended.

“Based on the length of time that has gone on in the search, the extensive search efforts that we’ve put into it, the water temperature, at this point we do not believe we are going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Gilreath said.

Two people — one who was briefly hospitalized and another who declined a trip to a hospital — were rescued, authorities said.

Many more may have been spared: The Maryland Transportation Authority Police on the highway above the ship prevented many cars from driving on the bridge just before the collapse, likely saving lives.

Hours after the overnight collision, sunrise illuminated the chaos. A massive ship sat in the middle of the Patapsco River and strewn about were pieces of what used to be the 1.6-mile bridge that carried 12.4 million commercial and passenger vehicles in 2023.

Baltimore awoke to the tragedy: states of emergency declared by both the mayor and governor, ongoing prayers and rescue efforts for those missing, and a bridge that had disappeared from the skyline.

Tragedy on the bridge

Tuesday was a disheartening, dizzying day of updates and information as Marylanders grasped for reality and authorities pieced together what Mayor Brandon Scott called an “unthinkable tragedy.” Agencies involved ranged from local first responders to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Biden gave a White House address Tuesday afternoon, vowing that the federal government would foot the bill for a new crossing.

“I expect the Congress to support my effort. This is going to take some time, but the people of Baltimore can count on us, though, to stick with it every step of the way until the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt,” Biden said.

The Coast Guard deployed four boats, as well as a helicopter, to aid in the search and used sonar and underwater drones as part of rescue efforts. In the predawn darkness, some rescue boats and emergency personnel gathered at the boat ramp in Turner Station Park, nestled in a cove on a tributary of the Patapsco.

Divers battled temperatures, tide and darkness as they searched through water, about 50 feet deep, for vehicles or missing people. The National Data Buoy Center reported water temperatures in that area to be about 49 degrees at 4 a.m. — a dangerously cold temperature.

Lt. Col. Roland Butler, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said surface ships will be on the river overnight while divers plan to continue the search Wednesday at 6 a.m.

The construction crew on the bridge worked for Brawner Builders, whose executive vice president, Jeffrey Prtizker, said in an evening interview with The Baltimore Sun that six of the company’s employees were “presumed dead.”

“It’s a terrible, terrible, unforeseen tragedy,” he said. “None of us could have imagined this could happen. We are all kind of shocked and distressed.”

The crash immediately drew comparisons to the 1980 collapse of Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway, when a 606-foot freighter collided with a support column amid a storm and destroyed the bridge, killing 35 people.

The total of those feared dead Tuesday in Baltimore might have been worse had more cars been on the bridge at the time of the crash.

“These people are heroes,” Gov. Wes Moore said of police who prevented cars from driving onto the bridge. “They saved lives last night.”

Video from the incident shows the container ship, billowing smoke, colliding with the bridge support and much of the structure quickly collapsing. Just before the crash, the ship’s lights appear to turn on and off multiple times.

A Coast Guard briefing report obtained by The Sun stated that “a harbor pilot and assistant were onboard and reported power issues, multiple alarms on the bridge, and loss of propulsion prior to the incident.” U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin told The Sun in a phone interview that indications point to the vessel losing power, causing it to lose steering.

Scott, the mayor, had given his State of the City address Monday night and was still awake at the time of the collision.

“It looked like something out of an action movie,” he said.

‘A long road ahead’

The collision blinked by in seconds. Its consequences will span years.

All vehicle traffic has been rerouted from the bridge, which is part of the Baltimore Beltway, a key traffic artery. Commuters will be funneled into the two cross-harbor tunnels. But some vehicles — like those transporting hazardous materials — can’t use the tunnels and will have to take the long way around.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Port of Baltimore was still processing trucks inside of its terminals, but vessel traffic into and out of the port was suspended, state Transportation Secretary Paul J Wiedefeld said. The Coast Guard report stated the “Patapsco River channel is fully blocked.”

Sal Mercogliano, a Campbell University professor and former merchant mariner who hosts a YouTube show on shipping, said it could take “weeks, if not months” to clear the channel of bridge debris and open a lane for ships. That will likely have grave consequences on commerce in the region.

“We know that we have a long road ahead, not just in search-and-rescue, but in the fallout from this,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said at a news conference.

Dispatchers first reported a possible vehicle in the water at the Key Bridge around 1:40 a.m., according to audio captured by Broadcastify and reviewed by The Sun. About 12 minutes later, a first responder who reached Fort Armistead Park got on the radio, relaying the unfathomable scene in front of him.

“Be advised, the entire bridge — the entire Key Bridge — is in the harbor,” the person said. “The entire Key Bridge has fallen into the harbor.”

Priscilla Thompson, who lives on the water in Dundalk facing the Key Bridge, was awakened in the middle of the night by the horrible sound of crashing steel.

“I really thought it was an earthquake or something because it shook this house so bad,” she said. “It shook it — it really rattled it — for four or five seconds.”

“And then, it got real quiet,” she said.

Jesus Campos is an employee of Brawner Builders, the company with a crew on the bridge when it collapsed. He used to work on the bridge team, but was recently switched to a different shift.

“I could have been there like my co-workers,” he said in Spanish through a translator.

Investigating a disaster

Those who have seen video of the crash can see that something went awry. The ship appears to lose power, it emits smoke, it crashes. But what exactly went wrong will take time to investigate.

Before ships leave the dock, they typically undergo a series of tests to ensure they are seaworthy. When asked whether Dali had any major deficiencies before taking off, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said “it’s much too early” to tell.

“That is part of our investigation — where we look, in-depth, at safety information,” she said.

The ship was under the operation of a local pilot, as is required by Maryland law, to guide it through the port. The pilot will undergo drug and alcohol testing as part of the investigation.

But, unlike the Ever Forward incident in 2022 — in which a pilot distracted by his cellphone contributed to the grounding of a container ship in the Chesapeake Bay — the incident appears to be one caused by mechanical, not human error, said Mercogliano, the former merchant mariner. Without power, the pilot and crew would have been unable to navigate, he said.

“When the power goes out — the worst feeling you can have on a ship as a sailor is everything gets quiet,” Mercogliano told The Sun. “That’s the worst. Because that’s the clear sign that everything is about to go wrong.”

All of the ship’s 22 Indian crew members and the two pilots aboard have been “accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries,” according to a statement from Dali’s owners and managers.

According to maritime tracking websites VesselFinder and MarineTraffic, Dali was built in 2015 and had arrived in Baltimore from Norfolk, Virginia. It left the Port of Baltimore around 1 a.m., about a half-hour before the collision.

Dali previously collided with a platform, known as a quay, while leaving the Port of Antwerp in Belgium in July 2016, according to VesselFinder. That caused significant damage to its hull, and it was docked for repairs before returning to duty.

A database of shipping inspections by authorities across the globe indicated that Dali’s most recent inspection, by the Coast Guard in September, reported no deficiencies, according to the data compiled by Equasis, a maritime safety website. The inspection before that was conducted June 27 at the port of San Antonio in Chile and found one deficiency related to “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” such as “gauges, thermometers, etc.” according to Equasis.

Clear Video of Traffic movement on Bridge before hit by a ship

At least 20 vehicles were on the bridge.

#keybridge #baltimore #Ship #FrancisScottKeyBridge #bridgecollapse #USA #BREAKINGNEWS #Baltimore #Maryland #BREAKING pic.twitter.com/NkH36hQ8Qp

— Chaudhary Parvez (@ChaudharyParvez) March 26, 2024

As for the bridge itself, which opened in 1977 after five years of construction, Federal Highway Administration records indicate the bridge had been considered in “good” or “fair” condition going back at least three decades. A 2023 Maryland Transportation Authority inspection found the bridge to be in “overall satisfactory condition.”

Moore said the bridge was “fully up to code” and Benjamin W. Schafer, a Johns Hopkins professor of structural and civil engineering who reviewed video of the incident, said he didn’t see anything that immediately stood out as a “red flag” in regard to the bridge’s structural integrity. He called the collapse “more of an acute event.”

The bridge had two supports holding it up; if you take one away, “it’s not a bridge anymore,” he told The Sun.

A landmark, all but vanished

For residents long accustomed to the Key Bridge, named for the Marylander who wrote the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” on the horizon, it was difficult to vocalize their shock.

Thompson, whose backyard looked out onto the bridge, teared up as she gazed at the wreckage as the sun rose. A treasured landmark had all but vanished, likely taking lives with it.

Nearby, Ralph Richards, of Dundalk, reminisced on watching the bridge’s construction as a child living near the waterfront. In disbelief, the 60-year-old studied the place where the bridge once stood.

“To see a blank spot? It reaches in and rips something out,” he said.

This article will be updated. Baltimore Sun Media staff Jeff Barker, Darcy Costello, Michelle Deal-Zimmerman, Hannah Gaskill, Sam Janesch, Natalie Jones, Lorraine Mirabella, Emily Opilo, Jonathan M. Pitts, Angela Roberts, Dillon Mullan and Lia Russell contributed to this article.

The rules would eliminate the once exciting two weeks each spring when anglers targeted large fish swimming up the bay to spawn. But this period had been delayed from April into May in recent years in an effort to protect the spawning fish, which diminished its allure.

”That’s the time when Maryland fishermen have access to what is essentially a large, oceanic fish,” said Lynn Fegley, director of fishing and boating services at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. “But given the very low recruitment — baby striped bass numbers — we’ve had successively over the last few years, we are moving to just give the fish a break.”

The emergency rules were spurred by a troubling so-called young-of-the-year survey, released in October, that found juvenile striped bass numbers in the Chesapeake Bay at their second-worst result since the survey began in the 1950s. It marked the fifth successive year showing numbers well below the historical average.

Under the new rules proposed by the department, Chesapeake Bay anglers wouldn’t be able to catch and keep rockfish, also known as striped bass, until May 16 next year. In the Susquehanna Flats, located at the mouth of the Susquehanna River near Perryville, Maryland’s newly proposed rules would push back the start date until June 1.

State officials said that the delayed opening in the flats, where many striped bass end their journeys from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn, is an attempt to further protect large adult fish lingering in the sprawling underwater grass beds near the Susquehanna, so they can produce more young.

“It’s a broad, shallow area, and it’s frequented by these spawning fish for that month of May,” Fegley said.

The regulations will go next before a General Assembly committee for review.

Maryland DNR officials also previously discussed extending the two-week summer closure, aimed to curtail fishing during the hottest time of the year, when the fish are the most vulnerable.

That option is “still on the table” for this year, Fegley said. But to address the springtime fishery, DNR needed to act more quickly with an emergency regulation, she said.

Extending the summer closure, which ran July 16 to July 31 this year, is unpopular among some anglers and charter boat captains, who argued that their businesses would face substantial losses by missing out on even more lucrative summer trips.

But the latest figures released by Maryland might necessitate a longer closure, in the eyes of natural resources officials.

During last summer’s juvenile rockfish survey, at 22 sites in the Choptank, Nanticoke and Potomac rivers, as well as the upper Chesapeake Bay, researchers trawled a seine net, and — on average — only caught one recently hatched striper. Historically, they caught an average of 11 young fish per trawl.

Maryland officials think that warm, dry winters in the Chesapeake region could be drawing stripers up into the rivers to spawn earlier than normal, when there’s less availability of a key food source for the hatching fish: zooplankton.

Allison Colden, Maryland executive director at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said she was heartened by DNR’s new regulations aimed at protecting fish in the springtime.

”I personally feel like we’re at a point where every fish counts — even if it’s not a huge slice of the pie,” she said.

But to see change, Colden said, greater action is likely needed in Maryland and along the coast. For example, she feels that a longer summer closure is warranted for the Chesapeake.

Captain Brian Hardman of Kent Island-based Lead Dog Charters, said that while he will lose some business because of the trophy season closure, it isn’t a huge amount. Last year, he only took a few trips during the two-week period in early May.

“The reality of it is: The fish are spawning earlier, and there hasn’t been that many large, female fish in the beginning of May to begin with,” he said.

Many customers opted to wait until the summer season started so that they’d be able to keep more fish, Hardman said. On a boat with six customers, Hardman said he only expected to catch up to three trophy-sized fish, if any.

Hardman said he was surprised that DNR is not also ending the catch-and-release fishery, which is allowed in certain areas of the Chesapeake through March, before striped bass fishing is banned in April for spawning time.

Hardman said that since warmer weather is prompting the striped bass to spawn earlier, he feels this might be a necessary step. During that period, many charter boats remain on shore for the winter, Hardman said, but recreational fishermen are among those still pursuing their catch.

”Everything is earlier, so their answer is: ‘I’ll have a closure later’?” he said.

In addition to the Maryland-specific regulations proposed by DNR on Wednesday, the multi-state commission in charge of striped bass management along the entire East Coast also is considering big changes for the fishery.

A new proposal by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission would reduce the total catch for commercial fishing boats by up to 14.5%, compared to 2022 figures.

It also would set narrower size limits for recreational anglers in the bay and in the Atlantic. Called “slot limits,” these rules set upper and lower restrictions on the size of rockfish that can be harvested. In some of the options suggested by the commission, boats would be allowed to keep only one fish per angler — even charter boats. In Maryland, charter boats previously were allowed to keep two fish per person while recreational boats could only keep one.

Hardman said he’s concerned that a one-fish limit could “decimate” business. Many of his charter customers only come fishing once a year, and allowing them to keep just one fish feels unfair, when recreational fishermen with their own boats can go fishing day after day and take one striped bass on each occasion.

The Atlantic States commission will be accepting public comment on the different options for the new rockfish rules online and at a meeting Dec. 6 in Annapolis. The commission will vote on the new rules at its January meeting.

Next year, the commission also will release a stock assessment for the entire population of striped bass, as opposed to Maryland’s numbers that focused just on young fish.

Those figures should be illustrative, Colden said, since they will show for the first time how significantly the bad population figures for young rockfish over the past five years are impacting the entire stock.

“A lot of people are really holding their breath for this 2024 stock assessment,” Colden said. “I think that’s when the rubber is really going to hit the road.”

For the time being, it seems as though the overall stock level is high enough that fisheries managers will not need to pursue a full-fledged fishing moratorium for striped bass, which was last done from 1985 to 1990, rescuing the fishery from the brink of collapse.

“While striped bass are on a downturn, we’re not back where we were in 1985,” Fegley said, “and it’s our hope that we can really be proactive as a state, and as a coast, and not have to go back there.”

After the grounding, Maryland issued an emergency wetlands license that allowed for dredging the shallow bottom around the vessel to refloat it. After several attempts — and the removal of about 500 cargo containers — the Ever Forward was freed April 17.

Wednesday’s vote by the Maryland board — which includes the governor, comptroller and state treasurer — tacks on a $676,200 payment to that license, which will go toward enhancing and reseeding 41 acres of oyster bars to mitigate for the grounding. Because the grounding occurred in Anne Arundel County, oyster bars there will be prioritized by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

About 29 acres of mitigation will take place on a public oyster bar and the remaining 12 acres will take place at an oyster sanctuary, said Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, in a statement.

In a statement, the ship’s Taiwanese owner, Evergreen Marine Corp., said “the agreement to fund this effort is not due to any sort of fine levied against Evergreen.”

“Preservation of the environment is a cornerstone of Evergreen’s core values,” the statement read.

Oysters are an important bay species because they are filter feeders, meaning they remove algae and harmful nutrients from the water as they live and grow. They can be grown and then planted on reefs in the estuary by human hands to bolster their population.

The Ever Forward’s grounding and dredging impacted 14 acres of bay bottom, including 11.5 acres within the boundary of a natural oyster bar, the Maryland Department of the Environment said in a news release.

The impacted bar wasn’t very populated to begin with, according to a survey by the Department of Natural Resources, so there were “no discernable impacts” on oysters, aside from the “deep footprint of the ship and dredging.”

But the area was a favored habitat for blue crabs during the winter, when the creatures burrow into the muddy bottom to protect themselves from the cold.

The grounding and subsequent efforts to free the Ever Forward impacted an estimated 423 crabs, or about 5 bushels, according to DNR’s survey.

Given that the average baywide harvest of blue crabs is 1.3 million bushels annually, the grounding’s impact on the crab population is “very small,” the survey said. But, the grounding could redistribute crabs to other locations for their “overwintering.”

That could impact local harvesters, because the location beside the Craighill Channel is known to be a productive area for crabbing in the springtime when the crabs emerge from the mud, according to the survey. Exacerbating matters, 2022 was already a year with a very low blue crab population, when crabs appeared to be favoring the northern bay, the survey stated.

Apperson said in his statement that Maryland officials don’t just evaluate individual species to determine the cost of mitigation, but rather the collective impact of the activity in question — in this case the impact of dredging on the oyster bar.

“Oyster bars provide fisheries habitat for many different species, including crabs, specifically by providing foraging grounds, as well as structured habitat, which can be useful for predator evasion,” Apperson added.

In a report last month, the U.S. Coast Guard stated that the Ever Forward’s bay pilot had spent half of the vessel’s two-hour voyage on phone calls, and sent a few text messages and drafted an email before the grounding. The state has since suspended the license of the pilot, Steven Germac, and the Coast Guard report warned he could face civil penalty action for his conduct.

Currently, the Maryland Board of Pilots, which licenses and regulates the pilots using the Port of Baltimore, doesn’t have a cellphone policy but is expected to consider the matter at its next meeting Friday.

Bay agreements prescribing pollution cuts for 2000 and 2010 would both fall short. And now, it seems targets for 2025 won’t be met either.

Winegrad, a longtime bay advocate, is among the legislators and environmentalists frustrated by the impending failure — and by an Environmental Protection Agency that appears more likely to move the goal posts than to drop the hammer.

“It’s a collapsing house of cards,” Winegrad said. “The restoration has reached a nadir. It is at its lowest ebb. And no matter how many people try to put lipstick on a pig, that’s the way it really is.”

Last week, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s executive council painted a rosy picture of the recovery effort thus far while asking its staff members to spend the next year evaluating a new path forward for the stalling agreement. The council did not announce any new sanctions against the states lagging behind — all but West Virginia and Washington, D.C., according to the EPA.

The plan, established by the EPA in 2010, set a “pollution diet” for specific contaminants entering the Chesapeake, including nitrogen and phosphorous. According to the EPA, the states are poised to hit 49% of the required nitrogen reductions and 64% of the phosphorus reductions.

Advocates say EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who serves as chairman of the council, should use the tools at his disposal more aggressively to enforce the pollution reductions required by the 2025 plan. The EPA could withhold grant funding and critical environmental permits or ramp up environmental inspections and fines, for instance.

“The Chesapeake Bay cleanup agreement is missing its most important tools: enforcement and accountability,” said Betsy Nicholas, executive director of Waterkeepers Chesapeake. “We have had a lot of great success with voluntary measures. We’ve gotten where we can get with those. And if we just throw more money at the problem, we’re never going to get there.”

Nicholas and others spoke at a news conference Tuesday timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the federal Clean Water Act, landmark legislation that called for swimmable and fishable waters in the United States by 1983. But much of the conversation focused on the growing realization that the Chesapeake Bay states will fall short of their pollution reduction targets once again.

In an interview, EPA’s Mid-Atlantic administrator Adam Ortiz highlighted his team’s decision in April to increase environmental inspections and enforcement in Pennsylvania for all sectors — from agriculture to industry and wastewater treatment.

“Pennsylvania is where most of the bleeding is occurring, so that has been our focus,” he said. “But the other states certainly have a lot to do.”

Taking other kinds of steps, such as withholding grant money, could be counterintuitive, Ortiz said. He likened it to “not giving food to the starving person” since many EPA grants help states and localities address pollution issues.

In Maryland, the EPA did reject a pollution plan for the Conowingo Dam, Ortiz said. The dam, which once trapped high quantities of sediment rushing down the Susquehanna River toward the Chesapeake, has essentially filled, meaning overflows of pollutants and sediment are an increasing threat.

The moves have reflected an about-face from former President Donald Trump’s EPA, Ortiz said.

“We’re taking over from an EPA that was under Donald Trump, that zeroed out the Chesapeake Bay Program year after year,” he said.

Tuesday, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, bemoaned what he considered the overly congratulatory tone at last week’s Chesapeake Bay Program meeting, which featured Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, both Republicans who touted their state’s pollution reduction efforts.

“Gov. Hogan and Virginia Gov. Youngkin congratulated themselves when EPA extended the deadline rather than imposing sanctions,” Frosh said. “This is not cause for celebration.”

Frosh said there’s a “nuclear option” for the EPA to consider as well, in response to the states’ failures. The EPA could wrest regulatory authority from the bay states and go after polluters itself.

In Maryland, that function is handled by Hogan’s Department of the Environment, which has attracted scrutiny recently for a decrease in water pollution inspections and associated staff members.

Frosh said he’s hopeful Maryland will soon be “turning the page,” with a new administration replacing the term-limited governor, and that such action from the EPA wouldn’t be necessary. But Frosh said he feels no such optimism about Pennsylvania, which has the steepest hill to climb to meet its 2025 commitments.

“There’s been some interest over the past few years in Pennsylvania stepping up, but frankly, I haven’t seen it,” he said. “If you have an EPA that’s doing its job, it could make a huge difference.”

In 2020, Frosh’s office sued the EPA over its enforcement of the 2025 agreement, particularly for Pennsylvania and New York. It came shortly after the Trump-era Chesapeake Bay Program director said publicly that the plan was aspirational — not enforceable.

President Joe Biden’s EPA has taken a different tack.

In addition to stepping up inspections, the EPA rejected Pennsylvania’s bay pollution reduction plan, forcing it to submit revisions that are still under review, Ortiz said.

But Ortiz has cited recent legislative victories in Pennsylvania as a source of optimism. The state will spend $220 million of its federal American Rescue Plan money on a Clean Streams Fund to include payments to farmers who take steps to reduce pollution running off the land into local waterways.

More must be done to hold the agricultural industry accountable for its contributions to the bay’s pollution loads, said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, which is based in Washington, D.C.

“We’ve relied on voluntary programs and exhortation to persuade the agricultural industry to do its part. It’s just not working,” Schaeffer said. “We really need enforceable limits for the agricultural sector and we need them enforced. … Until we get that, we’re just going to be back here in another 15 years bemoaning the failure of yet another bay cleanup plan.”

Fifty years after the Clean Water Act’s enactment, some 80% of Maryland’s rivers and streams remain impaired for swimming, according to a report produced by the Integrity Project. The same goes for about 91% of the Chesapeake.