Here's a story that I picked up off CNN.com this morning: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/07/16/blue.crab.blues.ap/index.html Evidently, the iconic blue crabs are disappearing from Chesapeake Bay. This in the face of what I perceived as a thoughtful, well-designed, high-profile, upbeat, adequately funded, and highly focused social marketing campaign with the catchy slogan, "Save The Crabs...Then Eat Them' What happened? Are there any lessons out there that we can learn from this outcome?
Michael Bergman
Senior Environmental Educator
Reducing Toxic Threats
Washington Department of Ecology
PO Box 47600 Olympia, WA 98504-7600
360.407.6243
[email protected]
Blue Crab Blues
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Hi Michael,
One of the lessons that can come from that outcome pertains to the source of the problem and the target audience of the campaign. As I understand it, the Save The Crabs...Then Eat Them campaign was targeted at homeowners lawn care practices. While non-point source pollution is the main contributor to the nutrient pollution that is killing blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, far and away, the majority of non-point source pollution comes from agriculture (contributing approximately 40% of all nitrogen and 50% of all phosphorus entering the Bay), not from households. (http://www.chesapeakebay.net/images/07pollutionpie.gif) So while the campaign may have been successful at reducing households contributions to pollution in the Bay, those reductions were likely small in comparison to the large amounts of nutrient pollution coming from the agricultural industry. The huge politics surrounding this problem and why non-point source pollution and ag specifically have failed to be regulated in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are well-detailed in Roger Burkes book Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics, and the Struggle to Save the Bay: http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/4/1581
Jennifer