Wednesday May 4th

Doors Open at 6:00pm
Film starts at 7:00pm

St. Margaret’s Fellowship Hall
1601 Pleasant Plains Road
Annapolis, Maryland
Parking Available

FREE Admission, Donations at the door much appreciated.

Click here to RSVP for event

The Alliance in partnership with the Bay Journal are pleased to host the Annapolis area’s FIRST showing of Beautiful Swimmers Revisited.  

This new and very special documentary film takes us on a journey back to revisit the people and places featured in William W. Warner’s beloved book Beautiful Swimmers. Join us and discover how much about the Bay and its culture remains the same, and how much has changed – in the crabbing industry and in the science of conservation!The film is directed by Sandy Cannon-Brown and produc­ed by author Tom Horton and photographer Dave Harp with support from The Shared Earth Foundation and other donors.  The filmmakers will be at the event to discuss the film.In 1976, William W. Warner’s Pulitzer-winning Beautiful Swimmers delighted readers everywhere with tales of Callinectes sapidus, known to us as the Atlantic blue crab, and the Chesapeake watermen whose livelihoods depend on it.In this unique film, writer Tom Horton revisits and picks up where his late friend Warner left off. Returning to the people and places featured in that book after forty years, Beautiful Swimmers Revisited finds that while much about the Bay and its culture remains the same, a great deal has changed – in the crabbing industry and in the science of conservation.Horton narrates the film’s Cheaspeake Bay journey, from Baltimore Harbor to Virginia’s Tidewater, to retrace the life cycle and story of the blue crab, to look in on those who catch, study and eat blue crabs. Horton meets with scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, whose expertise on blue crabs is unmatched, as well as, crabbers who’ve been pulling them from the Bay for generations.Harp’s iconic images of the Bay, fishermen and the beautiful Callinectes sapidus weave the story together as it is told from kayaks, fishing boats, research vessels and Horton’s 21-foot skiff.The film demonstrates how science has evolved since Warner’s day to better understand the behavior of this enigmatic shelled creature and how it fits into the complex ecology of the Chesapeake Bay.