Governor Ehrlich Unveils 2004 Bay Game
Presents Certificate of Appreciation to Parole Mills Elementary School Students for Bayscapes Project

ANNAPOLIS, MD — On the shore of the Chesapeake with the Bay Bridge as a backdrop, Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. today unveiled the 2004 Bay Game to hundreds of school children. Maryland’s free annual Bay Game, the first of its type in the country, is designed to be played from the back seat of a car while riding to Maryland’s beaches along US Rt. 50 and MD Rt. 404 on the beautiful Eastern Shore. The Bay Game, for ages three and up, increases players’ awareness of how humans and the environment, especially the Chesapeake Bay, are interrelated and interdependent. It also gives young people an activity to keep them occupied during the long car ride.

“The Chesapeake Bay belongs to all of us, and we all must take responsibility for its health,” the Governor said to [more than 300] students, parents and educators from Parole Mills Elementary School in Annapolis, who received a Certificate of Appreciation for the school’s Bayscape project. “By helping us learn about the Bay, the Bay Game also helps us learn how to protect and restore the Bay.”

In it’s 8th annual printing, the 28-page Bay Game showcases the diversity of natural resource careers and features The Adventures of Cooper and Hanna, a story that brings to life the beauty, the bounty and the plight of the Chesapeake Bay.

Through the story’s characters, children – and adults who assist them or play along – learn that oysters, besides being seafood, serve as highly efficient water filters. They learn that bay grasses produce oxygen and provide safe havens for young fish and crabs. They learn how excessive silt, functioning like a vast cloud, deprives bay grasses of essential sunlight. They learn to see the Chesapeake Bay as the focal point of a large watershed that encompasses 95 percent of Maryland and parts of five other states.

The game is distributed by the Bay Bridge tollbooth personnel each summer (at staffed booths only), and is also used in classrooms and by educational youth groups as a teaching tool during the year. It is produced by DNR and paid for entirely by donations from public and private sponsors.

A downloadable version is available at www.dnr.maryland.gov/baygame – along with forms for ordering Bay Games for classrooms, events and groups.

Created in 1998, the Bay Game has educated 1.5 million children on the basics of conservation biology and the importance of Maryland’s natural resources throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

The sponsors of the 2004 Bay Game are:

Posted May 18, 2004