The Chesapeake Club Story

For many of us, the Chesapeake Bay means food and fun. As one of the world's most productive estuaries, the Bay provides some of the best seafood on the planet and a livelihood for thousands of people in our region. But the Bay's health is struggling, and we all play a role in its improvement.

Each spring, rain storms wash excess fertilizer off hundreds of thousands of suburban lawns into our streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. Once in our waterways, fertilizers designed to make our lawns green fuel the growth of excess algae, which threatens the health of underwater life like oysters and blue crabs.

The good news is that when a lot of us make little changes in our homes, yards and lifestyles, we can make a big difference. That's what the Chesapeake Club is all about: people working together to keep the Chesapeake Bay fun and full of the seafood we love. We're aiming to restore and protect the Bay through simple, practical steps in people's everyday lives.

Do your part to help "save the crabs...then eat 'em."

Join the Chesapeake Club today.

How to throw the perfect crab feast, Chesapeake style.

Create the Chesapeake homestead — a place in touch with the neighborhood and the watershed.

Develop and maintain a healthy Chesapeake yard without becoming a fertilizer dumper.

Find lawn care professionals who offer the Chesapeake Club standard — a standard of lawn care designed specifically for the grasses, soils and growing seasons of our watershed.

Taste the Chesapeake with the region's best recipes and cookbooks.

Find restaurants & bars that have joined the Chesapeake Club to protect the food they serve.

The Algonquin Indians got it right: The Chesapeake is the Great Shellfish Bay. We taste it in Maryland crabcakes, cream of crab soup and the best oyster stew on earth. We feel it catching crabs, roasting oysters and rockfishing. We see it watching a skipjack at sunset. The Chesapeake Club is about making sure all that is here for generations to come. Because there is no finer life than the Chesapeake life.

Make a day of a trip to the Bay or one of its rivers.

Romantic getaways not too far from home, where you and a special someone can connect with your inner Chesapeake.