Bay Facts

Forty-six percent of watershed residents never use toxic pesticides in or around their homes. You can evaluate a pesticide’s toxicity to judge the risk in using it, or make your own non-toxic pesticide with garlic, vinegar, cooking oil and other common household items.

The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay is about 12 miles wide between its northern point near Cape Charles, Virginia, and its southern point close to Cape Henry, Virginia.

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.

There are nearly 1,800 local governments in the Bay watershed, including towns, cities, counties and townships.

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

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.

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 Bay and its tidal tributaries have 11,684 miles of shoreline—more than the entire U.S. west coast.

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, reaching as high as 84 degrees in summer.

At 4,863 feet above sea level, Spruce Knob is the highest point in the Chesapeake watershed.

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

Salinity is highest at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, where water from the Atlantic Ocean enters.

There are as many as 200 invasive species present in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that are causing some serious issues in an already-stressed ecosystem. Some examples include blue catfish, snakehead, zebra mussel, purple loosestrife, and nutria.

The Bay’s width ranges from four miles near Aberdeen, Maryland, to 30 miles near cape Charles, Virginia.

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

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

There are 6,282,718 acres of accessible green space within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.