Bay Facts

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 deepest part of the Bay, located southeast of Annapolis near Bloody Point, is called “The Hole” and is 174 feet deep.

The Bay receives about half its water volume from the Atlantic Ocean in the form of saltwater. The other half (freshwater) drains into the Bay from the enormous 64,000-square-mile watershed.

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

The Chesapeake Bay watershed contains three distinct geologic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont plateau and the Appalachian province.

Captain John Smith and his men sailed the Chesapeake Bay in a modest wooden boat called a shallop–an open wooden workboat such as a barge, dory, or rowboat that was small enough to row but also had one or two sails.

Two of the United States’ five major North Atlantic ports—Baltimore and Hampton Roads—are on the Bay.

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

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.”

The Chesapeake Bay watershed has 150 major rivers and streams, but contains more than 100,000 smaller tributaries.

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

At filter feeders, oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.

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 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.

Major rivers emptying into the Bay include the James, York, Rappahannock, Potomac, Patuxent, Patapsco and Susquehanna from the west and the Pocomoke, Wicomico, Nanticoke, Choptank and Chester from the east.

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