Blue crab. John Starmer/Marine Photobank
The 2013-14 health snapshot from the Chesapeake Bay Program said the 64,000-square-mile (166,000-square-km) watershed covering six states and the District of Columbia was threatened by rising sea levels, warmer water and urban development.
With the region’s population growing by about 150,000 each year, “it could be suggested that we’re loving the Chesapeake Bay to death,” Nick DiPasquale, the program’s director, said in a conference call.
Richard Batiuk, the program’s associate director for science, said improvement had been rapid when the recovery effort began in the mid-1980s. With such easy steps as water treatment and reducing use of fertilizers already taken, improvement has slowed in the last decade or so, he said.
Among signs of health, the Bay Barometer showed that between 2012 and 2013 the abundance of underwater grasses was up 24 percent, to 59,927 acres (24,252 hectares).
The abundance of American shad in the watershed rose in 2013 to 41 percent of the program’s goal. Between 2013 and 2014, the abundance of juvenile striped bass went up significantly and is close to the historic levels for Virginia and Maryland.
On the down side, the abundance of spawning-age female blue crabs fell 53 percent between 2013 and 2014, to 68.5 million. The figure is well below the target of 215 million and means blue crabs, the official Maryland state crustacean, are in a “depleted state,” the report said.
Only 29 percent of the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality standards were attained although river pollution fell below the long-term average in 2013.
The size and severity of the bay’s annual “dead zone,” or low-oxygen area caused by pollution, remained unchanged, although its duration has fallen over time, the report said.
For decades, overfishing, silting and pollution have taken a toll on the Chesapeake. Polluted runoff from urban areas and farms has been especially harmful.
The Chesapeake report card comes less than two weeks after new Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, pulled a pending rule that would have limited farmers’ use of phosphorus-rich chicken manure on their fields.
The Chesapeake Bay Program is a regional partnership that includes state and federal agencies, governments, nonprofits and schools.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Will Dunham and Eric Beech)
Categories: Fisheries, Hypoxia, Ocean Economics, Rivers to the Sea, Watershed Pollution
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