The Chesapeake is the largest estuary, the largest bay on the eastern coast of the United States. Its shoreline is 4600 miles long, more than enough to stretch across our country.

It produces more oysters than any other body of water in the world. In fact, the Maryland portion alone can claim this distinction, year after year. It also produces more Atlantic blue crabs, by far, than any other place in the nation. It is the prime habitat of the rockfish or striped bass, and a very important feeding ground for a host of other fish.

The Chesapeake and the adjoining marshes and backbays of the Atlantic coast are the central trunk of the Atlantic ...