What is a watershed  It covers 64,000 square miles between Vermont North Carolina The Chesapeake bay is huge

The chesapeak bay is a ecosystem  It covers a surface area of over 2,200 square miles approximately 3,500 square kilometers.  Over 2500 different kinds of plants and animals live in the bay area

How is a bay like your ecosystem  Over 13 million people work, play, live. One way or another, pollutants from all of these people wind up in the bays waters.  Chesapeake bay is covered with farms factories cities and highways schools and apartment buildings, landfills and campgrounds restaurants and marinas.

Its all down hill  Just imagine industrial waste pouring out of Baltimore's factories,puddles of motor oil on the highway, extra fertilizer and pesticides from lawns in virginal and Delaware, muddy runoff from construction sites in Maryland, acid from mines in west virginal, cow manure from Pennsylvania dairy farms, and sewage from 13 million people’s toilets.  With all this human made pollution no wonder the bay is in trouble.

Too many pollutants  Too many nutrients from human sewage, cows manure, and fertilizer overloading the bay.  Too many algae cloud the water and keep light from reaching the grass below.

The importance of grass  The grass beds are tensile to the bays health.  Grass beds near the shore line help absorb the pounding of the waves.

Sediment kills  Forests keep sediment out of the Chesapeake.  Some sedimentation occurs naturally. But humans cause most of it, especially when we cut down trees and other vegetation.

Oysters natures filters  Oysters serve as natural filters, helping keep the water clear. To trap its food, microscopic algae, an oyster pumps in water-up to two gallons per hour!  Chesapeake was pilled high with oyster beds but only one percent of the oysters are left.

Go fish  But you may have heard of others, such as shade, rockfish (striped bass), herring perch eel, and blue fish. Some eat plants and algae. Some are bottom feeders and hunt in oyster or grass beds for snails, small crabs, and worms. Some eat small fish  Why are fisherman catching fewer fish? there are many reasons. People built dams across the rivers in watershed area.

Blue crabs: The last great catch.  The chesapeake bay sill produces about half of the nations blue crab harvest. They are the last great catch in the bay. Blue crabs are real survivors. They are scavengers who eat almost anything they can find.

Searching for the solution  In the real world of the chesapeake bay, the problems are much more complex. And the pollutions are too  Everyone agrees that the chesapeake bay has many problems, most of the human- made.