NOAA Begins Funding Chesapeake, Delaware Bays Project

According to an October 23 press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency granted $330,000 to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science to help fund a five-year, $1.8 million NOAA project centered on giving resource managers greater ability in analyzing and predicting how climatic issues and nutrient loading affects hypoxia ("areas of low dissolved oxygen"), water quality, and fishery production in the Chesapeake and Delaware bays.

The press statement explains that, in aquatic systems, hypoxia occurs where dissolved oxygen concentrations are below 25 percent of their capacity. When this happens, most organisms the majority of organisms either suffer stress or avoid waters experiencing low dissolved oxygen. Hypoxia can and does occur because of natural factors. However, pollution also heavily contributes to hypoxia and climate change events, which have been connected to fish and oyster kills, and so-called "ecosystem shifts" (where species such as jellyfish increase in population). More than 50 percent of the United States' estuaries undergo either natural or "human-induced" hypoxia annually. While the deep waters and some shallow tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay experience hypoxia every summer, the more shallow, "well-mixed" waters of the Delaware Bay suffer hypoxia for shorter durations of time.

"We hope this research on Chesapeake and Delaware Bay hypoxia issues will provide new insights into its stimulants, and how we, as coastal stewards, can better manage and mitigate its effects in coastal waters here and elsewhere," stated John. H. Dunnigan, NOAA's Assistant Administrator for the National Ocean Service, in the press briefing.