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Decline in dead zones: Efforts to heal Chesapeake Bay are working
"We now have evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference. I think that's really significant."
- lead author Rebecca R. Murphy, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins
Efforts to reduce the flow of fertilizers, animal waste and other pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay appear to be giving a boost to the bay's health, a new study that analyzed 60 years of water quality data has concluded.
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation's largest estuary, a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the bay is about 200 miles long, has about roughly 4,480 square miles of surface area and supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and other animals.
The team found that the size of mid- to late-summer oxygen-starved "dead zones," where plants and water animals cannot live, leveled off in deep channels of the bay during the 1980s and has been declining ever since.
The timing is key because in the 1980s, a concerted effort to cut nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was initiated through the multistate-federal Chesapeake Bay Program. The goal was to restore the water quality and health of the bay.