Bay Facts

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The 195-mile-long Rappahannock River is the longest free flowing river in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Nine in ten watershed residents never toss food wrappers, cups or cigarette butts on the ground. Almost eight in ten watershed residents pick up litter when they see it.

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.

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

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.

There are twelve known species of shark that have been sighted in the Chesapeake Bay, with only five considered a common occurrence—smooth dogfish, sand tiger shark, sandbar shark, spiny dogfish, and bull shark.

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

More than 1,800 vessels have met their end in Bay waters, lying broken and battered on the Bay's floor.

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 area of the watershed is about 64,000 square miles.

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.”