Stopping at Bob Evans Seafood in Shady Side, Lou Hyde reports he routinely finds blue catfish in his 240 crab pots in Herring Bay. Some of the horned invaders are so fat that he tears up his pots cutting them loose.       Mick Blackistone, fishmonger, worries that they’re eating juvenile crabs.

      You’ve decided it is time to bring a four-legged family member into your home. Congratulations! It’s a great decision.       You probably know whether you are looking for a dog, cat or other companion animal. But you don’t know where to start. Maybe you visit a shelter or a rescue. Maybe you start looking on social media.      You see lots of little faces in need. How do you know which is right for you?

          Maps don’t tell us everything there is to know about a place. Most don’t show what used to be in a location or how it was significant to people. A new online tour bridges that gap for some 200 sites in the Four Rivers Heritage Area of Anne Arundel County.

     Last September, Michelle Dashiells needed a little hope.      She had recently divorced her husband, leaving her a single mother raising two children, a 13-year-old boy with special needs and a six-year-old girl. The 41-year-old mother also struggled with a bone-degenerative disease — she has almost no cartilage in her bones and can’t lift things — as well as arbitrary seizures and a neurological disorder that causes memory loss.

      Weather plays out in high drama on the Bay’s big stage. In stormy weather, clouds sweep the sky in roiling 3D Technicolor, complete with sound and light effects.       In calmer weather, the blue sky repeats itself in blue water. Sunrise and sunset pull out their rainbow palettes. Sun and moon dance in gold and silver shimmers on the water.      No wonder artists are inspired by the drama of weather on the water.

     Birds led Colin Rees — a former environmental advisor for the World Bank — to Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. There he discovered a wider love, of the natural world, so strong it led to his latest book, Nature’s Calendar: A Year in the Life of a Wildlife Sanctuary. 

    As the Woodwind drifted from the sunlit waters of the Annapolis marina, seven young sailors prepared to sail the 74-foot schooner into the Chesapeake Bay and back.      The crew — a mix of preteen boys and girls garbed in bright-green T-shirts — hailed from Brendan Sailing, a local school teaching life skills to children with learning differences. Many of the children have autism, ADHD and dyslexia.

  Humans aren’t the only mammals swimming in the summer Bay. Dolphins are making regular visits, too.       From April to September, these sleek swimmers are being spotted from Virginia’s Northern Neck into the Potomac River and up all the way to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore.

     Giant tires, propane gas tanks and shopping carts bogged down with mud.     Trash-picking volunteers found this trash and more in the littered waters of the Potomac River at the 31st annual Watershed Cleanup. The Alice Ferguson Foundation initiative sent out 9,745 volunteers between mid-March and late-May. They scooped 376,933 pounds of trash into garbage bags.

      “Water is the driving force of all nature,” Leonardo da Vinci said.       Yet 663 million of us do not have access to safe, clean water, according to thirstproject.org.      In Honduras, 457 people now have access to water that is safe to drink, cook with and bathe in, thanks to a partnership between two Rotary Clubs, Prince Frederick and La Paz, Honduras.