Bay Facts

Mallows Bay is the final resting place for more than 200 historic shipwrecks dating back to the Revolutionary War. Commonly referred to as the “Ghost Fleet” of Mallows Bay, it is the largest collection of shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere.

The Chesapeake Bay is home to 26 different species of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV), including freshwater plants, estuarine plants, redhead grass, and marine species.

The formation of the Chesapeake Bay happened 35.5 million years ago when a meteor collided with Earth, forming a massive crater.

Half of pet owners always pick up after their pet, but one-third of pet owners seldom or never do so. Pet waste contains bacteria that can harm human health and contaminate the water we use for drinking, swimming and fishing.

The Chesapeake Bay holds more than 18 trillion gallons of water.

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, dropping as low as 34 degrees in winter.

The Bay is surprisingly shallow. Its average depth, including all tidal tributaries, is about 21 feet. A person who is six feet tall could wade through more than 700,000 acres of the Bay and never get his or her hat wet.

Eighty-six percent of watershed residents believe if people work together, water pollution can be fixed.

The Susquehanna River is the Bay’s largest tributary, and contributes about half of the Bay’s freshwater (about 19 million gallons per minute).

While one-third of watershed residents have volunteered their time or donated their money to a charitable organization, less than two in ten volunteers have done so for an environmental organization.

The Bay produces about 500 million pounds of seafood per year.

The word Chesepiooc is an Algonquian word referring to a village "at a big river." In 2005, Algonquian historian Blair Rudes helped dispel the widely-held belief that the name meant “great shellfish bay.”

There were many different tribes in the region before Europeans arrived, but the dominant group were Algonquian speakers known collectively as the Powhatan tribes.

The Susquehanna River watershed includes nearly 50 thousand miles of rivers, streams and creeks.

Legislation proposed by Maryland’s Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative John Sarbanes to incorporate the bay into the nation’s park system.

The surface area of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is approximately 4,480 square miles.

The Chesapeake Bay Program was organized in 1983 to help lead and direct restoration in the Chesapeake Bay.