Bay Facts

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

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, dropping as low as 34 degrees in winter.

Legislation proposed by Maryland’s Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative John Sarbanes to incorporate the bay into the nation’s park system.

The Susquehanna River watershed includes nearly 50 thousand miles of rivers, streams and creeks.

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.

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

A few deep troughs run along much of the Bay’s length and are believed to be remnants of the ancient Susquehanna River.

The formation of the Chesapeake Bay happened 35.5 million years ago when a meteor collided with Earth, forming a massive crater.

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

The Chesapeake Bay watershed stretches approximately 524 miles from Cooperstown, New York, to Norfolk, Virginia. It includes parts of six states—Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia—and the entire District of Columbia.

Collectively, the Chesapeake’s three largest rivers—the Susquehanna, Potomac and James Rivers—provide more than 80% of the fresh water to the Bay.

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

Most of the water in the Bay, including in the middle portion of the Bay and its tidal rivers, is brackish–a mixture of salty and fresh, with a salinity level of greater than 0.5 ppt but less than 25 ppt.

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

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 Susquehanna River is the Bay’s largest tributary, and contributes about half of the Bay’s freshwater (about 19 million gallons per minute).

Major rivers emptying into the Bay include the James, York, Rappahannock, Potomac, Patuxent, Patapsco and Susquehanna from the west and the Pocomoke, Wicomico, Nanticoke, Choptank and Chester from the east.

While one-third of watershed residents have volunteered their time or donated their money to a charitable organization, less than two in ten volunteers have done so for an environmental organization.

Healthy forests can capture more than 85% of the nitrogen that falls onto them from the air.

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.

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.