Chesapeake Bay Program partners released information on Nov. 16 on the state of the 2022 Chesapeake Bay dead zone. Experts from both the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Virginia Institute of Marine Science concurred that hypoxic conditions in the Chesapeake Bay were better than average in 2022.
The dead zone is an area of low oxygen that forms in deep bay waters when excess nutrients, including both nitrogen and phosphorus, enter the water through polluted runoff and feed naturally-occurring algae. This drives the growth of algae blooms, which eventually die and decompose, removing oxygen from the surrounding waters faster than it can be replenished. This creates low-oxygen—or hypoxic—conditions at the bottom of the bay.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science in its 2022 Chesapeake Bay Dead Zone Report Card, as well as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in its 2022 Final Hypoxia Report, found this year’s dead zone to be the 10th smallest observed since 1985.
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