The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States .It holds 18 hundred trillion gallons of water. The Bay is about 200 miles long, and is home to more than 17 million people. It has been on earth for millions of years and has survived many different events. The importance of the Chesapeake Bay is incredible; two of the United States’ five major North Atlantic ports – Baltimore and Hampton Roads – are on the Bay. (Chesapeake Bay Program, n/d). The Chesapeake Bay provides shelter and food to all living things in the surrounding area. Both people and animals use the Bays resources every day and have done so for centuries.
One of the Bays biggest resources is its oysters. Oysters are filter feeders which mean they feed on agley and clean the water. The oysters feed on agley and other pollutants in the bay turning them into food for them, then they condense the food down to nutrient and developed things like pearls.Filtering the water also helps the oyster to grow. One oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day, Oysters used to be able to filter the Bay in about a week. However these creatures are now scarce in the bay. The Chesapeake Bays Oyster (crassostrea virginica) Population has declined severely because of over harvesting, agricultural runoff, and disease. Now the Chesapeake Bay is becoming polluted without the oysters and the water is not nearly as clean as it once was. The Chesapeake Bay was the first estuary in the nation to be targeted for restoration as an integrated watershed and ecosystem. (Chesapeake Bay Program n/d). This report will show the cause and effect of the Chesapeake Bay's Oyster decline on the Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay means ‘Great shellfish Bay’ in Algonquin. The bay was once plentiful with O...
... middle of paper ...
...on is low due to agricultural runoff, disease and over harvesting. However there is still a future for the bays oysters, people have come together and made a plan to save The Chesapeake Bay. With time the bay will be restored to what it once was.
Works Cited
Chesapeake Bay Foundation.(2010). saving a national treasure
Chesapeake Bay Foundation. (2010). striking back against the Oyster Thieves
Chesapeake Bay Foundation. (n/d). Agriculture
Cronin, L. Eugene. (1986). Fisheries and Resource Stress in the 19th Century
Kennedy, Victor S. and Kent Mountford. (2001). Human Influences on Aquatic Resources in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Stratchy. (1953). The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania
Chesapeake Bay Program. (n/d). Facts & Figures
Dr. Henry M. Miller. (n/d). The Oyster in Chesapeake Bay History
Virginia Institute of Marine Science. (n/d). Dermo Fact Sheet
silence. Living from “hand to mouth” induced the gold miners to only be able to
Looking at the early English colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region, it’s clear that the English had not learned any lessons from their experiences at Roanoke. Poor planning, a bad location, unrealistic expectations, flawed leadership, unsuccessful relations with the local Indians, and no hope of finding the mineral wealth the Spanish found in Mexico, all contributed to failure. The first colonists in the Chesapeake region were not only ignorant, lazy and unambitious, but their attempts were hampered before they had begun. However, a solution to these problems was found in a single plant: tobacco. Nevertheless, this cash crop ultimately created numerous problems for the colonists. The ignorance and indolent acts of the Chesapeake colonists to unsuccessfully restore the colony by themselves led to the demise of the colony as a whole especially regarding the planting of agricultural goods for food.
During the 1600's, many people in the American colonies led very many different lives, some better than others. While life was hard for some groups, other colonists were healthy and happy. Two groups that display such a difference are the colonists of New England and Chesapeake Bay. New Englanders enjoyed a much higher standard of living. This high standard of New England's was due to many factors, including a healthier environment, better family situation, and a high rate of reproduction.
Over the past 100 years the Louisiana coastline has suffered greatly from biotic, abiotic, and anthropogenic factors. The abiotic factors include things such as hurricanes or overnutrition that influence the surrounding biota. The biotic factors that contribute to coastal erosion are things like the immigration invasive species and the emigration or extinction of local flora and fauna that help preserve the wetlands. Additionally, there are anthropogenic factors such as pollution that can have strong negative influences on the abiotic and biotic factors of the wetlands. Each one of these factors cause ecological disturbances to the wetlands at a frequency and intensity that is unmanageable for the local flora and fauna. There are currently certain measures that are being taken into consideration to slow or stop the erosion of the Louisiana coastline.
...us estimates about what a proper cleanup would cost from $1 billion to $30 billion, with most estimates hovering around $15 billion.” That is a lot of money. To go as far as bumper stickers and billboards just might be too much for the public to handle though. The Chesapeake Bay’s slogan of “Save the Bay” is on everything they produce. I would never call a body of water “dead” especially one that has been so instrumental to the development of this area. The Chesapeake Bay can still be restored and become a profitable, beautiful bay. I just thing time has already run out.
One oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day, oysters used to be able to filter the Bay in about a week. However, these creatures are now scarce in the bay. The Chesapeake Bays Oyster (crassostrea virginica) population has declined severely because of over harvesting, agricultural runoff, and disease. Now the Chesapeake Bay is becoming polluted without the oysters, and the water is not nearly as clean as it once was. The Chesapeake Bay was the first estuary in the nation to be targeted for restoration as an integrated watershed and ecosystem.
Zebra mussels have now found there way to the United States originating from the Caspian Sea and sought habitation, originally, in Lake St. Claire when ballast water brought them in. From there, zebra mussels have spread and have caused havoc to the environments and its biodiversity, specifically, Presque Isle. Zebra mussels are filter feeders of zooplankton and phytoplanktons, making the water appear clearer, but not cleaner. They have negatively impacted the existence of clams, walleye and several other organisms. In order to preserve the biodiversity of Presque Isle, zebra mussels must be culled and controlled. Several methods that can be utilized to achieve this goal is by chlorination, poison, scraping, etc.
They also look after the quality of coastal waters by watering down, sifting, and settling deposits, left-over nutrients and contaminants. They are highly productive ecosystems and provide habitats and act as nurseries for all manner of life.
In the early 1900s people from Italy started to arrive on ship. They first arrived in Detroit, Michigan and later immigrated to Gloucester, to fish like they did back in the old country. Children, as young as ten years old went fishing to make a living for their family. When they first came the fishing industry was booming. There was no limit to how long you could fish or how much you could catch. Many men went fishing for weeks at a time. When Italian fishermen came upon the Atlantic off what is now Cape Cod, the waters churned with schools of fish. When they came nearly 800 of them in Boston and Gloucester combined became fishermen. In New England, cod was king. Enriched by a West Indies trade of fish for molasses, boat owners were referred to as the "codfish aristocracy. Sadly in the late 1990s the fishing industry went downhill and changed for the worst. (.)
For many years now scientists and researchers have been paying their attention to the bay. Millions of dollars and hundreds of hours have been spent to return the bay to its glory. However, with all that has been done the bay is still in danger and the work is no where near complete. In 2005 the bay's health was evaluated at a “D”. (Chesapeake Bay Restoration)
The Long Island Sound is an estuary, and is in fact one of the largest in the world. An estuary is a place where salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from the rivers that drain from the land. Moreover, like other estuaries, the Long Island Sound has an abundance of fish and other waterfowl that add to the natural balance of the island, as well as one of the most important economic factors (Tedesco). Like other estuaries around the world, the Sound provides breeding, feeding, nesting, and nursery areas for many species that will spend most of their adult lives in the oceans (Long Island Sound Study). Despite these similarities to other estuaries, the Long Island Sound is unique from anywhere else in the world. Unlike other estuaries, the Long Island Sound does not just have one connection to the sea but it has two. It has two major sources of fresh water flowing into the bay that empty into the ocean. It combines this two-...
The Chesapeake Bay is a large bay that stretches from Maryland to Virginia, fed by many rivers and streams that run from as far north as New York to Virginia and West Virginia.5 It is home to a plethora of plants and fish species, many of which the people of the area fish for food and supplies. The pollution present in the Chesapeake Bay is affecting the livelihood of both the fishermen and the fish – the less the fishermen haul due to the death of the species they catch, the less they get paid – and as consumers of these fish, we are consuming the toxins as well.
Globally coastal wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, the problem is most of society does not realize the value of these precious wetlands. Coastal wetlands provide an important role in the coastal ecosystem. “Coastal wetlands provide critical services such as absorbing energy from coastal storms, preserving shorelines, protecting human populations and infrastructure, supporting commercial seafood harvests, absorbing pollutants and serving as critical habitat for migratory bird populations”(Anonymous, 2011). Coastal wetlands are an economical asset as well as an environmental one.
Smith, Zachary A., and Grenetta Thomassey. Freshwater Issues: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print
Rogers, Peter. 2008. "Facing the Freshwater CRISIS. (Cover story)." Scientific American 299, no. 2: 46-53. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2010).