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AN UNPRECEDENTED SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO ANUNPRECEDENTED EVENT: TROPICAL STORM AGNES AND THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

M.P. Lynch

Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062

K.G. Sellner (ed.). 2005. Hurricane Isabel in Perspective. Chesapeake Research Consortium, CRC Publication 05-160, Edgewater, MD.

ABSTRACT

In June 1972, the remnants of HurricaneAgnes brought destructive floods to the watershedof the Chesapeake Bay basin. Unlike HurricaneIsabel, Agnes did not strike Chesapeake Baydirectly, but deposited a record amount of rainfallon the watershed. The evening that the Agnesrainfall began in earnest coincided with a meetingof the Citizens Program for the Chesapeake Bay.The directors of the three largest Chesapeake Bayresearch institutions, Drs. Donald W. Pritchard, L.Eugene Cronin, and William J. Hargis Jr., were inattendance at this meeting. The potential magnitudeof the Agnes rainfall was readily apparent at themeeting as one of the planned evening events hadto be moved due to a foot of water in the meetingroom. The following morning at breakfast, the threedirectors committed their institutions to “OperationAgnes,” extensive studies of the biological,chemical, and physical impacts of this event.

Hargis, Cronin, and Pritchard were goodfriends and strong competitors of long standing.Since 1949, Pritchard had been the first full-timedirector of the Chesapeake Bay Institute (CBI);Cronin had headed the Chesapeake BiologicalLaboratory (CBL) since 1951; and Hargis had beendirector of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science(VIMS) (and its predecessor the Virginia FisheriesLaboratory-VFL) since 1959. In 1964, the threedirectors had set up an informal Chesapeake BayResearch Council (CBRC) to coordinate some oftheir Chesapeake Bay research activities. They usedthe CBRC mechanism to coordinate “OperationAgnes,” a commitment that was made without anyassurance of financial support for these studies. The

gamble taken by the three laboratory directors wassuccessful, eventually resulting in a peer-reviewedbook published by The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress entitled The Effects of Tropical Storm Agneson the Chesapeake Bay Estuarine System.

Operation Agnes was the last projectundertaken by the CBRC. Reorganization by twoof the parent institutions and incorporation of theChesapeake Research Consortium (CRC) resultedin a realignment of Chesapeake Bay scientificleadership and the leadership of Operation Agnesmoved from CBRC to CRC.

The scientific community’s response toTropical Storm Agnes—an unprecedented event—was in itself unprecedented. A number ofcoincidences came into play: recent (1969)experience with flooding from Hurricane Camille;fortuitous attendance of the leaders of the threelargest Chesapeake Bay research institutions at ameeting directly affected by Agnes; and the priormobilization of the three institutions to conductextensive hydrographic studies throughoutChesapeake Bay. The most important factor,however, was the strong commitment of threelaboratory directors to the understanding of theChesapeake Bay system.

The Event1

In June 1972, the remnants of HurricaneAgnes reached the Chesapeake Bay region as atropical depression with winds of less than 39 mph

1 Information in this section was primarily developed fromthe summaries of Agnes impacts produced by theChesapeake Bay Research Council and the ChesapeakeResearch Consortium [1, 2].

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(63 km. As it passed through the Chesapeakeregion, it picked up strength from coastal watersand again became a tropical storm. From 21 through23 June, rains directly attributed to Agnes reachedthe Chesapeake basin, falling on a watershedalready saturated with precipitation dropped by acold front that produced rainfall of 2.5–7.5 cm withisolated stations reporting up to 15 cm. Agnesproduced measured rainfall over the entirewatershed in excess of 13 cm with about a third ofthe area receiving more than 30 cm from June 21–23, 1972. Other storms, such as Hurricane Camille(August 1969), had produced greater rainfall atselected stations, but no recorded storms hadproduced the amount of rainfall that fell over sucha large area as Agnes.

This record rainfall resulted in immediateflooding of the major Bay tributaries; most riverscrested at record levels. Peak normalized flow[Normalized flow = (average flow for a period)/(normal average for the same period)] was rapidand exceeded 60 in the James and Rappahannockrivers, slowed to 30–40 in the Susquehanna andYork rivers, with the Potomac falling between thetwo. Flow rates also decreased faster in the Jamesand Rappahannock rivers compared to the York andSusquehanna rivers. Salinities were depressedthroughout the system for extensive periods of time.The floods of Agnes were estimated to be a 1-in-200 year event.

Unlike Isabel, winds were relatively lowduring Agnes, seas were not unusually high, andshore erosion in the tidal Chesapeake remainedrelatively low. Large quantities of sediment,however, were stripped from the watershed andtransported to the tidal Chesapeake. In ten days,an estimated 31 million metric tons, compared toan average annual discharge of .5–1 million metrictons, flowed down the Susquehanna River over theConowingo Dam at the head of the Bay. Depositionover some areas of the upper Bay was 15–25 cm,with up to 1 meter in channels. RappahannockRiver sedimentation from Agnes amounted tobetween 2 and 7.5 mm, equivalent to about one-third of annual deposition. The extensive runoff alsoresulted in unseasonably large increases in

nutrients, particularly nitrogen. This nitrogen wasrapidly tied up in the sediments, with the majorityof nitrogen remaining in the estuary and nottransported to the Atlantic. Release of nutrientsfrom the sediments in the following year resultedin extensive blooms. Dissolved oxygenconcentrations were depressed both in the Bay andits tributaries, with the extent of depressed-oxygenwaters much greater than normally found insummer months.

The entire biological community wasdisrupted to some extent. Soft-shell clams andoysters were the hardest hit shellfish. Blue crabswere initially thought to be displaced like finfishpopulations, but subsequent analyses of blue crabreproductive patterns indicated a major shift in1972. Oyster drills, molluscan predators of oystersand other shellfish, were essentially eradicated inthe Rappahannock and Piankatank rivers andseverely depleted in the James and York rivers.

Aquatic vegetation was severely impacted.Hardest hit was eelgrass, which was reduced byabout 89%. For all species combined, reductionwas about 67%. In the tributaries to the lower Bay,eelgrass has not recovered to pre-Agnes levelsthrough 2004.

Impacts to benthos and phytoplankton weremost severe in the polyhaline zones. Many of thesespecies were eliminated from their normal range.Fewer organisms from the mesohaline andoligohaline zones were as severely impacted andmany actually extended their normal rangesdownstream.

Economic losses in the tidal Chesapeake andits tributaries related to Agnes were estimated at$42.7 million in 1972 dollars (about $185.4 millionin 2003 dollars.)

THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITYRESPONSE

In 1972, research in the Chesapeake Bay wasdominated by three institutions: the ChesapeakeBiological Laboratory (CBL) founded in 1925, theoldest of the three and the largest unit of theUniversity of Maryland’s Natural Resource

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Institute; the Virginia Institute of Marine Science(VIMS), which had been founded in 1940 as theVirginia Fisheries Laboratory; and the ChesapeakeBay Institute (CBI), a unit of The Johns HopkinsInstitute which had been formed in 1948 with equalfunding from Maryland, Virginia, and the Officeof Naval Research.

In 1964, the long-time heads of these threeinstitutions—Dr. Donald W. Pritchard, the firstpermanent director of CBI (appointed 1949); Dr.L. Eugene Cronin, second permanent director ofCBL (appointed 1951); and Dr. William J. Hargis,Jr., the fourth permanent director of VIMS(appointed 1959)—executed a memorandum ofagreement which established a Chesapeake BayResearch Council (CBRC). This agreementreplaced the compact that governed the funding andoperations of CBI, which had by then fallen intodisuse.

Under this collaboration, the three institutionsdeveloped several agreements related to datacollection, data storage, and data sharing. With theadvent of the US Army Corps of Engineer’s (CoE)Chesapeake Bay Study in 1965, the councildeveloped a major cooperative program to collectprototype data for the hydraulic model of theChesapeake Bay that was eventually built atMatapeake, Maryland.

The three laboratory directors, although strongcompetitors, were very good friends and shared acommon goal of doing the best science possible inthe Chesapeake Bay. Each recognized that goodscience required good funding and that goodfunding came as a result of strong public andpolitical support. All three directors maintainedclose ties with organized citizens groups. They wereall on the Board of Directors of the ChesapeakeBay Foundation and had formed an ad-hoc Science

Figure 1. The Chesapeake Bay’s “Big Three.” From left to right: Bill Hargis, Don Pritchard, and Gene Cronin.Photo taken at the Bi-State Conference on Chesapeake Bay 1977, Patuxent Naval Air Station, Maryland.

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Advisory Committee for the Citizen’s Program forChesapeake Bay (now known as the Alliance forChesapeake Bay), an umbrella organization ofChesapeake Bay organizations started in 1971.

The Citizens’ Program was holding its 1972meeting in Fredericksburg, Virginia when the rainsfrom Agnes began falling on the watershed. By theevening of the first day of the meeting, it becameapparent that a flood event was underway as therooms scheduled for the evening’s event flooded.The following morning at breakfast the “BigThree,” (Pritchard, Cronin, and Hargis, Figure 1)realized the storm presented them with a uniqueopportunity to study a major flood event. Theyagreed to put their institutions’ resources out in theBay and tributaries as soon as possible to capturethe hydrographic results of the expected floods. Bythat afternoon and the following day, all threeinstitutions had personnel on the water.

This commitment was made without anyidentified funding. The institutions had thepersonnel, supplies, and equipment availablebecause they were prepared to do extensivehydrographic data collection for the CoE’s modelduring the summer of 1972. The CoE, however,had directed this effort be postponed until later inthe summer when low salinities from the wet winterwould return to more normal conditions. Dr. W.Jackson Davis, VIMS Assistant Director forFisheries Science, who along with the writer of thispaper had accompanied Hargis to theFredericksburg meeting, was assigned the task ofoverall Operation Agnes coordination. The authorwas assigned the task of trying to beg, borrow, orotherwise cajole logistic and financial support forthe operation.

The words “unprecedented scientificcommunity response” are used in the title. In 1972,there were essentially no regular surveys conductedwithin the Bay region except for fish and shellfishmonitoring. No continuous data monitoring stationsexisted except for NOAA tide gauges, NationalWeather Service weather stations, and U.S.Geological Survey stream gauges. The onlysignificant quantities of instrumentation to collectquality hydrographic data were the instruments

purchased for CoE model data collection. Yetdespite this lack of equipment and resources, themost extensive study of the impact of a major stormevent was successfully mounted based on thedetermination of three scientists that such anendeavor was an opportunity not to be missed.

The response to the CBRC initiative wasextremely gratifying. Several federal agenciescommitted funding within a few days of the event,bypassing normal lengthy reviews. The CoE,Philadelphia District was the first agency to providenew funding. The CoE, Norfolk District alsocontributed new money. Eventually the CoE,Baltimore District was persuaded that the Agnesexpenditures were appropriate for this CoE studyand fully funded the CBRC hydrographic studies.The fact that Drs. Pritchard, Cronin, and Hargiswere on the Scientific and Technical AdvisoryCommittee for this CoE study and Bill Hargisrepresented the Commonwealth of Virginia on theCoE Study Steering Committee may have helpedpersuade the Baltimore District.

New or reprogrammed funds were madeavailable by the National Science Foundation’s(NSF) Research Applied to National Needs(RANN) program and Oceanographic section.NOAA’s Sea Grant Program and National MarineFisheries Service’s (NMFS) Anadromous Fish (PL88-903) and Jellyfish (PL 89-720) programsprovided some new funds and allowed substantialreprogramming of committed funds. In Maryland,the state’s Department of Natural Resources andthe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowedreprogramming of the Bureau of Sport FisheriesDingle Johnson funds. Financial support was alsoprovided by the U.S. and Virginia offices ofEmergency Preparedness, the Environmental Pro-tection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration,and Columbia Natural Gas Corporation.

At the time of Agnes, the only large, fastvessels dedicated to oceanography in the CBRCinstitutions were the R/V Ridgely Warfield, acatamaran operated by CBI specifically designedfor coastal and estuarine oceanography along withtwo oil field crew boats operated by CBI. VIMShad several very large, slow boats (including a car/

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passenger ferry and a converted Landing CraftUtility) and several smaller converted work boatsand sport fishing boats. The existing combined fleetand assigned vessel operators were insufficient tohandle the daily slackwater runs in the tributariesand mainstem Bay, as well as the continuous anchorstations desired and the desired sampling in thecoastal Atlantic. There was also concern that thefloodwaters would bring down large quantities ofdebris that could endanger small craft.

Fortunately several organizations in the regionprovided extensive vessel support. The NavalOrdnance Laboratory, Solomons, Maryland;Coastal River Squadron TWO, U.S. NavalAmphibious Base (USNAB), Little Creek, Virginia;Assault Craft Unit TWO, USNAB; U.S. CoastGuard Cutter, Cuyahoga, Yorktown, Virginia; andFort Eustis, Virginia provided both fast and sturdyvessels to meet these needs. The U.S. Coast Guardalso provided the Buoy Tender, Red Cedar,Portsmouth Virginia to set current meter arrays andthe Cutter, Point Martin, Little Creek, Virginia torecover and re-establish stations run over bycommercial shipping. Support for equipmentrecovery was also provided by the Navy’sExplosive Ordnance Disposal Unit TWO, FortStory, Virginia (diving) and the Naval OrdnanceLaboratory, White Oak, Maryland (magnetometer).The National Aeronautic and Space Admini-stration’s Langley Research Center in Hampton,Virginia provided helicopters, remote sensinginstrumentation, and personnel to measure Baysurface hydrographic conditions.

Shelf observation support was providedthrough NOAA by the NMFS’s R/V Albatross fromWoods Hole, Massachusetts and vessels andpersonnel from NMFS’s Sandy Hook, New Jerseylaboratory. The U.S. Coast Guard also supportedshelf studies by providing personnel to make round-the-clock hydrographic observations at theDiamond Shoals, Five Fathom, and ChesapeakeLight towers.

Operation Agnes caught the attention of othersin the Bay scientific community and many scientistsadded an Agnes component to their studies. Thefirst report detailing the effects of Agnes on the

Chesapeake Bay was a report to the CoE,Philadelphia District prepared by the CBRC [1].

In addition to seeing Agnes visit theChesapeake region, 1972 saw the formal start of anew organization that assumed the role offacilitation of inter- and multi-university projectsthat had been informally provided by the CBRC.This new organization, the Chesapeake ResearchConsortium, Inc. (CRC), grew out of a projectfunded by the NSF’s RANN program. The originalparticipants in the project were the University ofMaryland, The Johns Hopkins University, andVIMS. These three institutions were joined soonafter by the Smithsonian Institution (at therecommendation of NSF). The only principal in theCRC who was a member of the CBRC was BillHargis, director of VIMS. At both the Universityof Maryland and The Johns Hopkins University,the principals were drawn from the academic sideof the organization as opposed to the ChesapeakeBay-oriented research institutions. The formaldocument establishing the CRC was signed inFebruary 1972, but it had not yet become fullyfunctional when Agnes struck.

After initiating Operation Agnes andcoordinating the initial report [1], the CBRCessentially turned over completion of the projectto the CRC. The CRC co-sponsored a conferenceon Agnes, “A Symposium on the Effects of TropicalStorm Agnes on the Chesapeake Bay EstuarineSystem,” with the CoE, Baltimore District. Theresults of this symposium were published as a two-volume CoE report containing about 47 technicalpapers. In 1976, The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress published a 639-page report detailing theeffects of Tropical Storm Agnes on the ChesapeakeEstuarine System [2] for the CRC. This volumecontained not only studies performed as part ofOperation Agnes by CBI, CBL, and VIMS staff,but also studies by several other Chesapeake Bayscientists, notably those involved in coordinatedstudies at the Smithsonian Institution’s ChesapeakeBay Center for Environmental Studies, now knownas the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Several reports on the effects of Agnes on theChesapeake estuarine system were presented at

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conferences and symposia and eventually in peer-reviewed journals as well as in the CRC book. Thehonor of producing the first peer-reviewed paper[3] went to Dr. J.D. Andrews2 of VIMS whopublished his study of Agnes’ impacts on epifaunain a 1973 issue of Chesapeake Science.

AFTER AGNES

In 1973, Dr. Pritchard resigned from thedirectorship of CBI for health reasons, but remainedas a senior scientist. In 1974, he took a one-yearsabbatical. After returning to The Johns HopkinsUniversity, he became director of CRC in 1976. In1977, he retired from The Johns Hopkins Universityand joined the staff of the State University of NewYork, Stony Brook. Dr. Pritchard died in 1999.

In 1975, the University of Maryland’s NaturalResource Institute was merged into the newlyformed Center for Estuarine and EnvironmentalStudies. Dr. Cronin served as assistant director ofCEES until becoming director of CRC, replacingDr. Pritchard. He remained director from 1977 untilhis retirement in 1984. Dr. Cronin died in 1998.

Dr. Hargis remained as director of VIMS anda principal in CRC. He served part of the time aschairman of the CRC board until 1981 when hereturned to full-time teaching and research. In 1991,he retired and remains active as an emeritus facultymember. VIMS was placed under the control of theBoard of Visitors of the College of William & Maryin 1979.

WILL WE SEE ANOTHEROPERATION AGNES?

Will we see the equivalent scientific responseto an “unexpected environmental event” in thefuture? I doubt it. The scientific infrastructure inthe Chesapeake Bay has become more complex.There is no longer a “Big Three” that controls oroversees the major resources devoted to Bayresearch. Two of the institutions or successor

institutions led by the “Big Three” are much largernow than in 1972. One has disappeared. Many otherinstitutions have developed an interest andcapability to study the Chesapeake Bay. Theleadership of the Bay scientific community is notas centralized or as close (some might say “closed”instead of “close”) as in 1972. The largest non-governmental organization, the Chesapeake BayFoundation, has developed its own in-housescientific capability. The Bay is now being lookedat with many more eyes.

In some ways, communication at the scientistlevel is better. The Scientific and TechnicalAdvisory Committee (STAC) of the ChesapeakeBay Program and CRC have convened groups ofscientists to address different problems over theyears. The Chesapeake Bay Stock AssessmentCommittee, instituted by NOAA as part of itscontribution to the Chesapeake Bay Program, hasgreatly improved communications betweenfisheries scientists working in the Bay.Communication among scientists at differentinstitutions does not now flow through theinstitution’s leadership.

In the 30-plus years since Agnes, however, itappears that the scientific leadership has been moreand more constrained by non-scientific businessmanagers in their own institutions and, moreimportantly, by business as opposed to scientificconsideration in the funding agencies. In the early1970’s, a program officer in a federal agency suchNSF, NOAA, or the CoE could make a commitmentto a scientist that a study would be funded if thescientist began a project without a signed grant orcontract and the money would materialize within areasonable length of time. By the end of the 1970’s,program officers would state up front they couldnot make any commitments until a grant or contractwas signed by the contracts office.

A legitimate concern for “accountability” hasled to a strong curtailment of the flexibility oncepossessed by laboratory directors and individualscientists. So many “sign-off” steps currently existin the process to obtain reprogramming approvalor to acquire funds on extremely short notice that

2 Dr. Andrews retired from VIMS in 1983. He died October28, 2004.

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most “unexpected events” will have come and gonebefore approval is obtained

Fortunately, as was seen in Isabel’s aftermath,advances in monitoring technology and practicesallow us to track system responses to unusual eventswithout the need to immediately launch major fieldefforts to capture the event.

REFERENCES

1. A.M. Anderson, J. Davis, M.P. Lynch, and J.R.Schubel. 1973. The Effects of Hurricane Agneson the Environment and Organisms ofChesapeake Bay: Early Findings and

Recommendations. A report to the PhiladelphiaDistrict, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.Chesapeake Bay Research Council. 172 pp.

2. J. Davis, B. Laird, E.P. Ruzecki, J.R. Schu-bel, R.J. Huggett, A.M. Anderson, M.L. Wass,R.J. Marasco, and M.P. Lynch (eds.). 1976. TheEffects of Tropical Storm Agnes on theChesapeake Bay Estuarine System. ChesapeakeResearch Consortium Publication No. 54. TheJohns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,MD. 639 pp.

3. J.D. Andrews. 1973. Effects of Tropical StormAgnes on epifaunal invertebrates in Virginiaestuaries. Ches. Sci. 14: 223–234.

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