Around Maryland

This fall, Sonny Gwin and a few other Maryland watermen will trawl the coast of Ocean City for a new bounty: shrimp. Thanks, climate change. Pass the cocktail sauce. For the first time, a small group will be allowed to catch and sell the crustaceans from Maryland waters, as part of a pilot program. Fisheries managers suspect that warming ocean temperatures and changing currents could be drawing greater numbers of shrimp north along the Atlantic coast.

It was supposed to premiere last fall but was canceled due to unsafe weather from Hurricane Ian. Now, the Oceans Calling Festival is finally happening this weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. “I think the excitement from the last concert is still fresh in everyone’s mind,” city manager Terry McGean told WTOP last November.

Several months after opening its doors to the public, Frederick’s second food bank location held a grand opening ceremony Tuesday. The Frederick Food Bank at Trinity, at 6040 New Design Road, provides a second food option for residents in need. Tuesday’s event featured free flu shots and health screenings, and food collection and distribution, according to a city release.

After two years of major construction, the nonprofit Maryland Food Bank hopes to serve as a central point in the state for hunger relief efforts and expand its culinary job training program as it pushes for increased community efforts during national Hunger Action Month. Community members who work for the organization, helped support the cause or directly benefited from the food bank’s assistance gathered last week to celebrate the completed remodel and look towards the next chapter for the nonprofit’s hunger relief efforts.

A truck driver who fatally struck a State Department employee riding her bike in Maryland — shortly after the diplomat had returned from a presumably more dangerous posting in Ukraine — pleaded guilty to a traffic offense Monday and was fined $2,000. Santos Reyes Martinez, 52, admitted in court to causing the death of Sarah Langenkamp 13 months ago when he turned his flatbed building supply truck into a bike lane along River Road in Bethesda.

“We are trying to be as fiscally responsible as we can, given that we are already set up with a limited budget,” said Elizabeth Marchetta, executive director of food & nutrition services for the Baltimore City Public Schools System. Since the start of the pandemic, the school system has seen higher food costs across all sectors, said Monique Rolle, BCPSS’s manager of meal planning and procurement. Their biggest jumps in expenses have been from meats and grains.

Carroll County sheriff’s deputies will soon have another tool available to monitor speeding drivers on county roads. The Board of Carroll County Commissioners approved a request from Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees earlier this month to purchase 10 solar-powered speed signs at a cost of $52,135 from All Traffic Solutions, in Chantilly, Virginia. The signs detect and display vehicle speed as drivers approach them, and work as a traffic-calming device to make drivers aware that they are driving at speeds above posted limits.]

Despite rising hospitalizations and case numbers of COVID-19, the federal global health crisis is officially over. That said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are looking to create a research and development network to better counteract future outbreaks and emerging disease. According to a CDC announcement Friday, the federal health agency awarded $262.5 million to 13 recipients in the public, private and academic sector, including the Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University, as part of the new Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADMN).