Is the Chesapeake doomed?

Do you have any idea how drastically different many states would be if the Chesapeake Bay did not exist or if it were completely destroyed? There are so many different types of organisms that only live in the Chesapeake and that depend on the world’s largest estuary as its sole environment to live in. (In case you don’t know what an estuary is, it’s where freshwater meets saline ocean water.) The Chesapeake also produces many ecosystem services for the area. It is a major breeding ground for many different species and is also home to many economically important species such as the blue crab.



Over the past few years, many different agencies and organizations, such as the Environmental Protection Administration and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, have been trying to do their best to educate the public about the importance of the Chesapeake Bay. They also have been trying to find new ways to take care of the bay and to bring the estuary back to a better state. The drainage basin of the Chesapeake Bay is so large and it would be hard to efficiently get the word out about the importance of its services. Wouldn’t it be terrible if we lost all of those tasty blue crabs that live in the Chesapeake Bay??



Is there anything we can do to fix the damage that we have done to this important ecosystem?? Recent studies funded by these various organizations have been trying to find different ways to clean up the bay and ways to help take some of the extra nutrients out of the system. One study was using oysters to try and filter out the nutrients from the water. They found that the larger oysters were very efficient at filtering out various nutrients that were overloading the water. They found that these oysters were capable of absorbing large quantities of nitrogen, phosphorous, and carbon from the water. With the help of these oysters, the Chesapeake Bay could possibly be on the right track to getting back to a more stable state.

I don’t think that these oysters have been introduced into the bay as of yet but the capabilities of the oysters have been studied in hopes that they will be able to have a positive effect in the system. I wonder what other organisms could be introduced into that system to help clean up the area…


I tried to use questions throughout the post to create a sort of hook and to get people thinking throughout. I also tried to use less technical language and explained the terms that I thought could possibly be confusing. I also tried to catch the reader’s attention by including some pictures that I hoped would not only break up the text but also give the reader something to look at. The pictures help the reader to relate to what I am talking about.