really is not in a position at the present time to advise the 
managers on exactly what management decisions to make. 
I think it's analogous to this fellow coming in to see his 
doctor who says, "I'm covered with sores; I keep getting mugged 
on my way to work." And the doctor says, "Well, you better 
watch your diet (nutrients), it will help." But that may not be 
the causality that is influencing the open sores. 
I think it's unfortunate that we talk about the Chesapeake 
Bay as "A Chesapeake Bay." It's really a very unusual estuary 
in that it is the sum of all its tributaries. The central 
channel during the winter and early spring serves as migration 
for larval life stages of fish that spawn outside the Bay and 
mainly as a shipping channel for the rest of the year. 
But what we must consider is the sum of the tributaries to 
this Bay? and each of them has a different weighting factor. 
Some of them require more than a "hundred feet" of grass. Some 
of them might require a lot more. I think we may find, for 
example, that sedimentation into the Bay is much more signifi¬ 
cant than sewage plant effluents. It might be easier to put all 
of our money into upgrading sewage treatment because we can 
monitor sewage plant effluent very easily. But it may not save 
the Bay. And particularly it may not save the particular 
species which spawn and use food sources in the tributaries. I 
think this is a very important consideration that we haven't 
addressed at all. 
Dr. Brush: I think one of the very important aspects of 
this program, and it was very unique, was to really look at the 
long-term history of some aspects of the Bay. We were able to 
document very clearly that SAV was not a cyclic life and death 
phenomena but that actually the demise of SAV was clearly re¬ 
lated to human activity. 
The thing that I find disappointing is that the monitoring 
program has not incorporated this technique which gives measure¬ 
ments of long-term variability into their program. We have been 
doing very detailed sedimentation rates which have allowed us to 
calculate annual rates of sedimentation in several tributaries 
of the Chesapeake Bay, particularly in the Upper Bay. 
We have been able to show, for example, in those years when 
there was high peak flow there is also high sedimentation. If 
this fine sediment is carrying with it toxics, nutrients, and so 
on, it is extremely important to know how far it's going and how 
quickly it goes from one place to another. 
The stratigraphic work is able to address those problems, 
and we have been able to compile some long-term trends. 
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