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The Chesapeake Bay and its watershed provide habitat—a home—to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals. The NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office recognizes the vital role of healthy habitat in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, and works to protect and restore a variety of habitats in the watershed.
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NOAA is mapping the Chesapeake benthic zone—the Bay bottom—to investigate relationships between this important habitat and living marine resources, including oysters, fish, and Bay grasses.
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Oysters are an important Bay habitat: they filter water, and grow in reefs that provide habitat for fish and crabs. Due to disease, overfishing, and other problems, only about 1% of the historic native oyster population remains.
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Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) provides food for waterfowl and protection from predators for juvenile blue crabs and finfish. Historically, the Bay had up to 600,000 acres of SAV; today, there are less than 100,000 acres.
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The shoreline of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is more than 11,600 miles long. Much of this shoreline is "hardened" with bulkhead and rip-rap. But natural, or "living" shoreline can provide habitat and protect against storms.
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A variety of coastal wetlands exist in the Bay region, providing habitat and flood and erosion controls and filtering pollutants from the water. Yet, wetlands have been lost at an outstanding rate due to population pressures and development.
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Fish need access to certain waters and bottom surfaces so they can spawn, breed, feed, and grow to maturity. Clearing dams and other impediments to fish swimming upstream is key to healthy fish populations in the Bay.
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What We Do 