Chesapeake Bay Chesapeake Bay covers 4,480 square miles, has a coastline of 11,684 miles and contains more than 15 trillion gallons of brackish water. The north is on the right in this image. Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and is one of the most productive bodies of water in the world. Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the country and the third largest in the world.
An estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with a free connection to the open ocean where fresh water from inland rivers mixes with saltwater from the ocean. Chesapeake Bay is the largest of more than 100 estuaries in the United States. About half of the volume of water in the bay comes from saltwater in the Atlantic Ocean. The other half flows into the bay from its enormous hydrographic basin of 64,000.
square miles. Because of this mixture of fresh and salt water, the salinity of the bay increases gradually as you move from north to south. Enable JS and turn off any ad blockers. In September 1781, during the War of Independence, the British sank more than a dozen ships in the York River, near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
Concern about the increasing discovery of pollution problems in the bays and the institutional challenges posed by organizing bay restoration programs over a large geographical area led Congress to order the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assume a greater role in studying the scientific and technical aspects of the problems starting at the end of the decade of 1970. Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries serve as spawning and breeding grounds for two-thirds of the country's commercial fish and shellfish species. Chesapeake Bay is home to Baltimore and Hampton Roads, two of the five major North Atlantic ports. The Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, which was built with shallow barges and ships to counter British naval attacks during the War of 1812. Researchers are working in Chesapeake Bay to gather information on water quality, the abundance of plants and animals, coastal erosion, tides, waves and the proliferation of harmful algae.
In the 1970s, there were only 60 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the entire Chesapeake Bay region. On average, the depth of the bay is 21 feet (6.4 m), including tributaries; more than 24 percent of the bay is less than 6 feet (2 m) deep. Chesapeake Bay is an estuary in the North Atlantic, which extends between the Delmarva Peninsula to the east and the North American mainland to the west. The European colonists who populated Chesapeake Bay in the late 17th and early 18th centuries brought industrial agricultural techniques with them.
It was sunk the same year in the Potomac River off Chesapeake Bay after a high-powered event organized by the U. Some may not even have their own boats, let alone win regattas, but they are inexorably drawn to Chesapeake Bay. Chesapeake Bay is home to more than 3,600 different species of plants and animals, including fish, mollusks, plant species, and all types of underwater grasses. The Chesapeake Bay watershed has been heavily affected by natural forces such as erosion, tides and a story of hurricanes and other storms.