Bay Facts

There have been 10 U.S. presidents from the Chesapeake Bay watershed, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan and Joe Biden.

Captain John Smith and his men sailed the Chesapeake Bay in a modest wooden boat called a shallop–an open wooden workboat such as a barge, dory, or rowboat that was small enough to row but also had one or two sails.

At filter feeders, oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.

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

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

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

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 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 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.

The Bay produces about 500 million pounds of seafood per year.

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

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

Water temperatures in the Bay fluctuate widely throughout the year, reaching as high as 84 degrees in summer.

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.”

The widest point of the Chesapeake Bay measures 35 miles, and is located near the mouth of the Potomac River.

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

The Chesapeake Bay watershed contains three distinct geologic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont plateau and the Appalachian province.