A single year's data may be insufficient. Compounding the problem is that some important fish species are not managed at all - people have no control over their abundance. Take the tiny bay anchovy, a fish that grows to only a bit longer than 4 inches. It is the Bay's most abundant fish, and almost everything seems to eat it, from birds and animals to other fish. In fact, bay anchovy has been estimated to provide more than half of the total energy intake of predatory fish in the Chesapeake.
Surveys seem to indicate that Bay anchovy populations can fluctuate widely from year to year.
But no surveys are aimed directly at the fish, despite its importance. That is another kind of data gap that scientists and fisheries managers agree needs to be filled. Some find room for optimism, though. While the Bay has many species, he notes, many interact with one another little, if at all. In other words, while striped bass may sometimes eat squid, that interaction, in the big picture, probably isn't significant.