Geography:

The watershed includes the entire District of Columbia and parts of six states: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Size:

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest of 130 estuaries in the United States.

The Bay is about 200 miles long, stretching from Havre de Grace, Maryland to Norfolk, Virginia.

The Bay's width ranges from 3.4 miles near Aberdeen, Maryland to 35 miles wide near the mouth of the Potomac River.

The water in the Chesapeake is surprisingly thin! The Bay is generally shaped like a shallow tray. Its average depth including all tidal tributaries is about 21 feet with a few deep troughs running along much of its length that reaches 174 feet in depth.

The square footage (surface area) of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is 200 billion square feet, or around 7,000 square miles.

The Bay and its tidal tributaries have an estimated 11,684 miles of shoreline. This is more than the entire West Coast.

Environment:

The Bay receives about half of its water volume from the Atlantic Ocean. The rest drains into the Bay from an enormous 64,000 square-mile drainage basin or watershed.

The Chesapeake holds more than 18 trillion gallons of water.

There are about 150 major rivers and streams in the Chesapeake drainage basin.

The Susquehanna River provides about 50% of the freshwater coming into the Bay – an average of 19 million gallons of water per minute.

The Bay supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and animals, including 348 species of finfish, 173 species of shellfish, an over 2,700 plant species.

The Chesapeake Bay is home to 29 species of waterfowl and is a major resting ground along the Atlantic Migratory Bird Flyway. Every year, one million waterfowl winter in the Bay's basin.

The Chesapeake Bay was the first in the nation to be targeted for restoration as an integrated watershed and ecosystem.

The Bay produces 500 million pounds of seafood per year.