Chesapeake Biological Laboratory

Perched on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay at Solomons Island, the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory is the oldest state-supported marine laboratory on the East Coast. R. V.

Truitt founded it in nineteen twenty-five with a mission to understand the Bay's fisheries before they collapsed under commercial pressure. Within six years the Maryland Conservation Department had taken it under its sponsorship, and a consortium of universities, including Johns Hopkins and the Carnegie Institution, joined forces here to study crabs, oysters, and the Bay's notoriously complex water chemistry. For a century scientists on this shore have tracked the Blue Crab population, documented oxygen dead zones, and testified before legislatures about what the Bay can and cannot withstand.

The lab remains the scientific conscience of the Chesapeake.