Cool Bay Facts
- The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary, a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. It is the largest of 130 estuaries in the United States.
- The Bay is about 200 miles long, stretching from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to Virginia Beach, Virginia.
- The Bay holds more than 15 trillion gallons of water.
- The Bay is surprisingly shallow. Its average depth, including all tidal tributaries, is about 21 feet. A person who is 6 feet tall could wade through over 700,000 acres of the Bay and never get his or her hat wet.
- The surface area of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is 125 billion square feet, or around 4,480 square miles.
- The Bay supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and animals, including 348 species of finfish, 173 species of shellfish and over 2,700 plant species.
- The Bay produces about 500 million pounds of seafood per year YUM!
- Everything we do on the land —including the use of cars, fertilizers, pesticides, toilets, water and electricity—affects our streams, rivers and the Bay.
- To restore the Bay, everyone has to make changes in the way we live in our own communities, homes and backyards.
