Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay
The \
Chesapeake Bay is the largest
estuary in the United States. It lies off the
Atlantic Ocean surrounded by
Virginia and
Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay's
watershed, covers 64,000 square miles, in the
District of Columbia and parts of six states:
New York,
Pennsylvania,
Delaware,
Maryland,
Virginia, and
West Virginia. More than 150 rivers and streams drain into the Bay. The Bay itself is about 189 miles long, from the
Susquehanna River in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south. Geologically, the Bay is the
drowned valley of the Susquehanna, meaning that was where the river flowed when sea level was lower, but the Bay's geology and its present form have also been affected by a
bolide impact at the end of the
Eocene (about 35.5 mya), forming the recently-discovered submerged
Chesapeake Bay impact crater. At its narrowest point, near
Annapolis, Maryland, it is only 4.3 miles wide and is spanned by the
William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge, commonly termed the "Bay Bridge". Near its mouth, it is spanned by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
Much of the bay is quite shallow. A person six foot tall could not only walk across the mouth of the Susquehannah at the upper bay, but could also traverse some 700,000 acres of the bay without being entirely submerged.
Chesapeake Bay was the site of the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 during which the French fleet defeated the Royal Navy allowing the United States to become independent.
The largest rivers flowing into the Bay are:
The word
Chesepiooc is an Algonquin word meaning "Great Shellfish Bay". The Bay was once known for its great seafood production, especially Blue Crabs, clams, and
oysters. The plentiful oyster harvests led to the development of the
Skipjack, the State Boat of Maryland, and the only remaining working boat in the
United States still under sail power. Today, the body of water is less productive than it used to be, because of
fertilizer runoff from agricultural development on the
Eastern Shore, urbanization, particularly on its western shore, and overharvesting. The bay, though, still yields more
fish and
shellfish than any other estuary in the
United States.
In the 1970s, the Chesapeake Bay contained one of the planet's first identified marine dead zones, where hypoxia waters were so depleted in oxygen they were unable to support life, identified when massive fish kills resulted. Chesapeake Bay's shellfish industry has also suffered from the toxic results of Pfiesteria poisoning in fish and humans, and red tides.
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