# Presentation: 528094

## The Chesapeake Bay – 

**The Chesapeake Bay – **
**	****a national treasure**

**Notes:**
Provide background

## CHESAPEAKE BAYFOUNDATION

- Founded in 1967 to ‘Save the Bay’
- Today’s numbers
- 140,000 members
- 36,000 Action Network members
- 10,000 student, teacher and citizen volunteers
- CBF works to Save the Bay through:
- Education
- Advocacy
- Restoration
- Litigation

## North America’s Largest and Most Productive Estuary

**North America’s Largest and Most Productive Estuary**

**Land Cover**
- Developed – 9%
- Agriculture – 23%
- Forest – 58%
- Mixed Open – 10%

**Notes:**
Watershed – 64,000 sq miles
6 states
50 major tributaries
185 miles long 4 miles wide at narrowest point (Bay Bridge) and 20 miles wide at widest (mouth of Potomac)
Very vulnerable system because it has the largest land to water ratio of any estuary in the world.  It has 9 times more land than water than the next estuary and 17 more land to water than the average estuary.  Very shallow – average depth is 22 feet
Allows light to penetrate and life to flourish but also makes it very susceptible to problems

## Slide 4

## Slide 5

## Source: 	J. Hagy, 2001

- Source: 	J. Hagy, 2001
- 	Hagy et al, 2003

## Slide 7

**Notes:**
Question we get asked all the time....
Difficult to answer because of complexity of the bay
However, we recognize the need to communicate clearly and effectively
Developed a health index or “state of the Bay” report

## Slide 8

## Slide 9

## Slide 10

## POLLUTION 

**P****OLLUTION**** **

- Nitrogen and phosphorus
- Water clarity
- Dissolved oxygen
- Toxic chemicals

**Notes:**
While everything we’ve talked about so far is very important, the Bay’s two primary pollutants are nitrogen and phosphorus.  Together, they constitute Public Enemy Number One for the Chesapeake.  They form the issue we most need your help with.

But nitrogen & phosphorus are fertilizers, aren’t they?  Aren’t they good?  Yes, in about the same way food is good for us.  The Bay ecosystem does need them in order to function. But it’s being overfed a junk food diet of them, roughly the equivalent of a human on 15,000 calories per day instead of 2,500 (that would be like eating 27 Big Macs every day, five at every meal and two as between-meal snacks!).  At that level, nitrogen & phosphorus become the Chesapeake’s most dangerous pollutants.  The result is a very sick, unbalanced Bay.

Nitrogen and phosphorus come from a variety of sources:  agriculture, sewage treatment plants, septic systems, urban/suburban runoff, and emissions from automobiles & power plants. 

The rest of this talk will focus especially on nitrogen, since it is the pollutant that has the greatest effect on brackish and salty waters in the Bay.

## HABITAT

**H****ABITAT**

**Forested Buffers**
**Wetlands**
**Underwater Grasses**
**Resource Lands**

**Notes:**
Let’s take a look at where we are now – beginning with Habitat.

Because the Chesapeake watershed gathers rain from a very large land area to flow into a very shallow settling basin (the Bay itself), the way we use the land has a direct, heavy impact on the health of the Bay ecosystem.

## FISHERIES

**F****ISHERIES**

**Crabs Rockfish ****  Shad Oysters**

**Notes:**
The next category is Fisheries, which includes crabs, rockfish, shad and oysters.  All are signature members of the Chesapeake ecosystem, and of the region’s culture. 

## Dissolved Oxygen

**Notes:**

On this map, from August 2005, the blue represents good oxygen numbers, while the green/yellow/orange/pink/red represents the dead zone.

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night gasping for breath because there is little or no oxygen to breathe. It’s a scary thought, but every summer fish and crabs in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries die just like that. 

Not only is this situation unacceptable for all living creatures below the surface, it’s also unacceptable for those people who depend on the Bay for feeding their families and for recreation.

## 82% of historic levels have disappeared

**Notes:**
UNDERWATER GRASSES PROVIDE HABITAT AND FILTRATION
82% of historic levels have disappeared Last year, underwater grass acreage increased in northern Bay waters, from the Susquehanna to the Chester and Magothy Rivers. Evidence in 2005 suggests grass beds in the mid- and upper-Bay are dense and have continued to expand. In particular, scientists report an explosion of grasses on the Susquehanna Flats—an abundance not seen in that area since before Hurricane Agnes in 1972. 
Meanwhile, lower Chesapeake grass beds continued to decline. Grass acreage in areas such as Mobjack Bay, for example, plummeted in 2004 to the lowest levels recorded since 1987. 2005 shows little evidence of improvement over the previous year’s record low, and experts are raising new concerns of a prolonged eelgrass die-off. 
While the overall increase in grass acreage Bay-wide is encouraging, the slow recovery of grasses in the southern sections of the Bay remains cause for concern because this area is critical habitat for blue crabs and a nursery for many species of fish. 

## Slide 16

**Notes:**
When John Smith first sailed the Chesapeake, the oyster reefs in the Bay were so large they formed navigational hazards. In the past 130 years, however, the Chesapeake’s stocks of oysters have crashed because of overfishing, pollution, and disease.

Baywide, restoration programs have demonstrated promise, and commercial oyster harvests in both states increased dramatically in 2005. The improved harvest suggests an increase in oyster numbers. The spike is most likely weather-related: good reproduction in 2002 due to lack of rain and high salinity followed by improved survival due to wet weather and low salinity in 2003 and 2004. It is not yet known how these oysters will fare during the next dry spell, when diseases that have hampered oyster recovery become more widespread. 
Scientists believe lower Bay oysters may be showing increased disease tolerance. The Lynnhaven, Lafayette, and Elizabeth Rivers in Virginia have established reef populations that have reproduced well in certain years. In Maryland, oyster survival has been high when direct disease management techniques have been applied in restoration programs. The prospects for oyster recovery in both states will improve if these successful techniques are applied on a larger scale. 

## CBF’s State of the Bay report is a useful tool for communicating with the public about the health of the Bay and the solutions to the problems it faces.