More than 25 years since the Chesapeake Bay Agreement of
December 1983 created a region-wide partnership “to improve and protect the
water quality and living resources of the Chesapeake Bay,”the
bay’s water quality has not improved, and communities that rely on a clean, sustainable
bay are paying a high price for the lack of progress.1
Pollution is a major cause of the bay’s problems.
Fertilizer-laden runoff from farms and lawns, as well as discharge from sewage treatment
plants, flows into the bay. This fuels algae blooms, using up oxygen in the
water and creating unnaturally large dead zones—areas where dissolved oxygen
levels in the water are so low that aquatic creatures flee or die. Sediment
from farms, roads, and construction sites further pollutes the bay.
This pollution creates multiple problems, including:
• Low dissolved oxygen levels. All
of the bay’s waters should meet state standards for dissolved oxygen. But
dissolved oxygen levels are worse today than they were 10 years ago, when 30
percent of the bay’s deep areas met the dissolved oxygen goal of at least 5
parts per million. From 2006 to 2008, only 16 percent met that goal.2
• Depleted underwater grasses. The grasses, which provide important shelter
for young fish and crabs, need sunlight to survive, but pollution-fed algae
blooms block the light. A healthy bay
would have 185,000 acres of underwater grasses; in 2008, it had slightly less
than 77,000 acres of this critical habitat.3
Pollution is not the only reason for the fisheries’ decline.
Other factors, such as overfishing and competition from foreign imports, are
also involved.4 But low oxygen levels and the lack of underwater grasses harm
the bay’s commercially valuable fish and shellfish in several ways:
• The dead zones kill bottom dwelling
organisms that are food for fish and crabs.
• Dead zones often kill crabs in their
traps and limit the areas where watermen can catch crabs.
• Dead zones force striped bass to
leave the cool, deep water they prefer and into warmer water, which stresses
their bodies, making them vulnerable to disease.
• Without underwater grasses to
hold bottom silt in place, sediments move into the water column. Oysters
suffocate under layers of silt, and too much sediment in the water column may
weaken oysters so much that they cannot fight off lethal diseases.
Historically, the bay supported commercial fisheries for
oysters, soft shell clams, blue crabs and striped bass. The oyster and soft shell
clam fisheries have collapsed. Since 1990, low catch limits designed to protect
the striped bass population have severely
restricted the ability of watermen to harvest this species.5
Crab harvests have fallen so steeply that in September 2008, the U.S. Secretary
of Commerce declared the Chesapeake Bay
commercial blue crab fishery an economic disaster.6
As commercial harvests fall, people and communities are
suffering economic hardship, social upheaval and the loss of cherished traditions.
• A Tilghman Island
waterman built a seafood company that employed 100 clam- and oyster-shuckers.
But after those two fisheries failed, the business shrank by four-fifths.
• After the dead zone in the Chesapeake made it too difficult
to catch live fish, a Chincoteague-based gill-net fisherman
no longer fishes in the bay.
• A seafood company on the Rappahannock River ships less and less fish to wholesale
fish markets because watermen are catching fewer fish.
• A bay community near Blackwater National
Wildlife Refuge supported six grocery stores 15 years ago. Now it’s down to one
grocery, and this summer the owner laid off an employee for the first time.
• A ship’s carpenter has trained dozens
of apprentices in the art of
restoring the bay’s iconic skipjacks, but the apprentices have all left the bay
area to work in museums.
Economists say the bay’s commercial fisheries are on the
verge of extinction.7 Healthy fisheries and healthy fishing communities are vital
parts of the Chesapeake Bay region’s economy
and heritage. To restore the health of the bay, federal and state governments
must:
• Strengthen limits on agricultural
pollution, particularly related to large poultry and livestock operations.
• Cut pollution from new and existing
developments.
• Provide adequate funding for wastewater
treatment plants to meet a best available control technology standard.
• Fully enforce pollution limits for
all polluters.
