Visitors to the Science Museum of Virginia might have wondered last week why gardeners were digging up a chunk of the facility’s expansive front lawn. As the week wore on, the muddy plot began to take shape. A space in front of the Ethyl IMAX Dome evolved into a BayScapes Garden, installed by staffers from the museum and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.

Virginia will get $7.5 million from the federal government to continue a program to help bring back blue crabs and employ out-of-work watermen. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday announced the funding from the National Marine Fisheries Service. The money will be used, among other things, to continue a program that employs out-of-work watermen to clean up marine debris. The program began this past winter.

In a move heralded as historic, federal and state leaders pledged yesterday to speed the cleanup of the long-polluted Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, those leaders, who make up a group called the Chesapeake Executive Council, pushed back the bay’s cleanup date from 2010—widely seen as unreachable—to no later than 2025. “Three words are important: ‘no later than,‘“ said the group’s chairman, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, indicating the cleanup could be finished sooner.

A search is under way for a man who fell off a boat near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

The state has issued $186 million in bonds to help the Chesapeake Bay by financing wastewater-treatment and sewer-system infrastructure and upgrades statewide. According to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s office, the Virginia Resources Authority total investment in bay cleanup in the past two years exceeds $810 million. “The commonwealth has dedicated more than $1 billion to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay since the start of my term, and we have made fighting pollution one of our core concerns,“ Kaine said in a statement announcing the bonds.

For years, the sorry state of the Chesapeake Bay has resembled the weather: Everybody complains, but nobody does anything about it. That might be an unfair characterization: More than $6 billion has been expended on cleanup efforts. But it is not unfair to say that the health of the Bay remains woeful nevertheless, and there seems little prospect for substantial improvement.

Two years ago, the diminished blue-crab population in the Chesapeake Bay was suffering a decline that seemed unlikely to abate. Once numbering more than 800 million, by the winter of 2007 crabs had sunk to a mere 280 million. Last year, Virginia and Maryland cooperated in imposing stringent rules aimed at reversing the slide. The regulations, such as a moratorium on winter dredging, hit watermen hard.

The blue crab may be crawling back. A winter survey of the Chesapeake Bay’s population showed an increase to about 418 million crabs, up from 280 million the year before. The 49 percent jump indicates tough crab protections put in place last year—including a ban on the winter dredging of crabs in Virginia—are helping reverse years of declines.

The increase indicates crab-protection measures put in place in 2008 — including a ban on the winter dredging of crabs in Virginia — are helping reverse population declines.

The Chesapeake Bay is gravely ill, and it’s not getting better. That’s the message of the annual state-of-the-bay report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group.

The Chesapeake Bay is gravely ill, and it’s not getting better. That’s the message of the annual state-of-the-bay report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group. The foundation gave the bay a score of 28 yesterday—a “D”—out of a possible 100. Although the numeric score has fluctuated slightly, that’s the 10th “D” in 10 years of reports.

The troubled estuary gets a D in today’s annual state-of-the-bay report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which says pollution caused by development continues to be a problem.

The Chesapeake Bay’s troubled oysters finally got some good news. Virginia, Maryland and federal officials said yesterday that they will focus on bringing back the native oyster, casting aside thoughts of putting a fast-growing but ecologically risky Asian oyster in the bay. “We’ll give it a hell of a go for the restoration of the native oyster,“ said Col. Dionysios Anninos, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District.

It’s official. Yesterday the appropriate representatives from Virginia, Maryland, and the Army Corps of Engineers spiked proposals to introduce Asian oysters into the Chesapeake to restore the oysterbeds of the Bay. Restoration will emphasize native oysters instead. Oyster lovers applaud the news. Gourmets savor variety. They appreciate oysters from the East Coast and from the West, oysters from the Maritimes, New England, the Bay, the Gulf, and the shores of Washington. Oysters native to the Chesapeake delight in texture and taste. Although smooth, they are not bland. They are complemented by a glass of white wine or a mug of ale.