Importance of the Bay  

1. Home to over 3,600 different species and populations of plants and animals, the 
Chesapeake Bay creates multiple ecosystems.  
These habitats within, include the bay itself, tributaries, rivers, forests, and wetlands 
which create a rich environment.  
The Chesapeake Bay and its watershed offer a variety of habitats allowing for a diverse 
population of animals and plants.  
Within the estuarine ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay, plant life flourishes because the 
water flow from the land often carries essential nutrients for plant growth. 
2. Humans also benefit greatly from the Bay.  
The Bay provides the people with about 500 million pounds of food per year, as well as 
acting as a transportation route for cargo ships. 
The conservation of the Chesapeake Bay is essential to a healthy and vibrant economy. 
There is money from numerous activities, such as tourism, real estate, and 
transportation, related to the Bay.  
There are over three billion dollars in sales, $890 million in income, and almost 34,000 
jobs to the local economy that comes from the Bay area, supporting the region's 
livelihoods and ways of life 
Current laws in Virginia 
1. A current and very important law in Virginia is Act 2.5 of the Code of Virginia, which is 
the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.  
Made up of 14 different sections, this act aims for an increase in water quality 
improvement within its watershed 
The most important provisions of the act dictate the management and planning of land 
use in order to reduce negative impacts on water quality. 
The act is balanced by state and local governments to create a cooperation that involves 
both of their economic interests and serves to improve water quality in the Bay 
Problems with Conservation 
 1. The excess nutrients that runoff from the land or come from people’s trash depletes the 
quality and health of the Bay and its habitats.  
Those pollutants often end up exhausting the necessary oxygen that the 3,600 species 
need to survive. 
2. Development had been the biggest factor of the watershed’s land loss, which soon led to 
the loss of air and water filters and had a negative impact on the wildlife’s habitat. 
Development also increased the amount of sediment pollution that ran through the 
Bay’s water 
3. Due to the Bay having a low-lying topography and having its population increase, it is 
making the Chesapeake Bay especially vulnerable to the dangers of climate change. The 
waters in the Chesapeake Bay have been rising at a steady pace, which is subsiding 
coastal lands 
Sharks 
1. Species: most common shark species are Atlantic sharpnose shark, sandbar shark, dusky 
shark, blacktip shark, sand tiger shark, tiger shark, and spinner shark, smooth dogfish, 
scalloped hammerhead sharks, black nose sharks, bull sharks, smooth hammerhead 
sharks, great white sharks 
2. The estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay serve as birthing and nursing grounds for the 
animals.  
Pregnant female sharks swim in through the mouth of the bay, have their pups in the 
small lagoons and coastal areas of the bay, breed and then swim back out offshore. 
With the drop in numbers of sharks, it has been difficult for them to repopulate. Sharks 
take a long time to mature and to be able to reproduce. 
3. Sharks are crucial to maintaining the biodiversity of any habitat they reside in.  
With the removal or population decline of this species, there are ripple effects seen 
throughout the ecosystem 
Sharks are important apex predators that help keep the balance of populations and 
ecosystems in the water.  
 As a top predator, sharks tend to prey on the weaker elements of the species lower on the 
food chain. 
4. The public perception of sharks has had a substantial impact on their historical 
exploitation. 
This exploitation happened when no shark fishing practices were regulated, which led to 
overfishing in the 1980s. Although management within the fishery began in the 1990s, 
recovery is only starting to happen now 
There are not state-specific shark protection laws, there are federal protections. These 
protections are very general and almost lenient. 
The most common piece of legislation that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration (NOAA) manages sharks in U.S. federal waters is with the 
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) using fishery 
management plans. Then, there was the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000, which 
amended the MSA to prohibit shark finning. 
Rays 
1. Species: electric rays, stingrays, butterfly rays, spiny butterfly rays, smooth butterfly 
rays, eagle rays, spotted eagle rays, cownose rays, Atlantic manta rays, manta rays, 
Atlantic stingrays, and bluntnose rays. The most common of the species is the cownose 
ray 
2. With the reduction of sharks in the Bay, there a large trophic cascade that resulted in an 
abundance of cownose rays 
In response to that, the saying, “Save the Bay, Eat a Ray” was created to reduce the 
predation on the mollusks as a predator-control method of cownose rays. 
there were questions and concerns brought up of the fishery management policies. 
These protections and management policies had been inadvertently and negatively 
affected.  
Some headway has been made in the legality of their conservation.  
The Maryland General Assembly passed Senate Bill 268, which bans cownose ray fishing 
tournaments in state waters.