My Day With The Natural Resources Police

Type: Tidal
Region: Middle and Upper Bay
Location: Chesapeake Bay and Severn River

On Suday July 8th I went out with Officer Markert of the NRP from Sandy Point State Park. Being on theBay, Sandy Point has many activities to offer such as boating, fishing, crabbing, swimming beaches, hiking, picnicing, camping for youth groups and muchmore. The park is 786 acres, which needs to be supervised at all times to make sure no supicious activity is going on. The NRP at Sandy Point can either be driving a boat patrolling the water, walking around the park, or driving a vehicle around the park. If the officer is on park grounds he/she is usaully looking for illegal drinking, littering and the overall safety of the people at the park. On the water the officer deal with underage drinking, big raft ups at certain locations like Ski Island, commercial and recreational crabbers, fisherman, speeding or any dangerous boating acts and more. They have to keep a close eye on crabbers because there is a size limit and recreational crabbers cannot keep female crabs. When inspecting fishermen�s boats the officer has to be complete and thorough, there are many different kinds of fish species in the bay and each one has a certain season they can be fished along with a catch and size limit. If any of these rules are broken the officer writes up a ticket or a warning. The day I was out was not too busy but Officer Markert did inspect one boat�s cooler and found undersized croakers. The fine for keeping croakers is $100 for three, then on top of that it is another $50 for each additional fish.

Officer Markert's route on the water was from the right of the Bay down to Ski Island in the Severn by Arden. There are decent size raft ups (a bunch of boats anchored in the same place) ranging from three boats to fifteen at the largest. But when I was out there was only one lonely boat anchored near the island, so no excitement going on that day. On other parts of the bay raft ups can get as large as 100 boats or more. When this happens the NRPs job turns more into a crowd management job. The police do not just barge in, they patrol the edges and don�t let anyone else raft up, they pick out single boats that are making trouble, take care of the problem and show everyone they are still there. Hopefully the raft up will slowly breakup without chaos or violence.

Nothing crazy happened on my day with the NRP, which is too bad, but I did learn a lot and became more appreciative about their job. Hopefully I�ll be able to go out another day to see what else goes on in the Chesapeake Bay.